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SCIENCE FICTION

a novelet by

fceby Isaac Asimoj^

SCfBHCB f/CTfON

iKXXSXSSSaSSSXSSiXSSSXXSXSSSXSIiSSi^^

The Edge of the Sea

ALOIS BUDRYS

Science: Atmosphere of the Moon

ISAAC ASIMOV

The Tall Psychiatrist

DICK HETSCHEL

Eve and the Twenty-Three Adams

ROBERT SILVERBERG

There Ain’t No Other Roads

ROBERT MARNER

Books: On Hand

THEODORE STURGEON

Intruder

DON BERRY

Virginia

C. M. KORNBLUTH

The Game of Glory (^novelet')

POUL ANDERSON

Ventiirings

THE EDITOR

130

Cover by Einsh, illustrating “The Edge of the Sea"
Interior ilhistrations by Giunta and Schoenherr

Joseph W. Ferman, publisher Robert P. Mills, editor

Venfur& Science Fiction Magazine, Vof. 2, No. 2, Whole No. 8, March, 7958. Pub-
lished bl-monfhly by Fantasy House, Inc., at 35^ a copy. 12-issue subscriptions $4.00 in
U.S.A. and possessions, Canada and the Pan American Union; $5.00 in all other
counfries. Publication office. Concord, N.H. Editorial and Genera/ offices, 527 Madison
Ave., New York 22, N. Y. Entered as second class matter at the Post Office af Concord,
N.H., under the act of March 3, 1879. © 1957, by Fantasy House, Inc. All rights reserved.
Profecfion secured under the International Copyright Convention and the Pan American
Convention. Printed in U.S.A. All submissions must be accompanied by stamped, self-ad-
dressed envelopes. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return of unso/icifecl
manuscripts.

Isaac Asimov, Contributing Science Editor Theodore Sturgeon, Book Editor

Anthony Boucher. Advisory Editor Norma Levine, Editorial Assistant

George Softer, Art Direcfor

~yenfurmgs

m We sit around this office for long hours waiting. . . . This is
perhaps appropriate for a magazine dealing primarily with stories
of adventure, because so much of true adventure is concerned with
huddling in a foxhole waiting for the barrage to begin, and then to
end . . . waiting for planetfall after a voyage through nothingness
that has lasted for many light-years . . . waiting for the final assault
which is that much more terrible because we have waited so long for it
. . . waiting . . .

And then in comes a story that makes the backbone of an issue,
and die waiting has been for something after all. This month, we
waited for Poul Anderson’s novelet to come in. And the next best
thing to its coming was the note attached to it. . . . “Incidentally,”
this story is a sort of revival. I did a few others about Captain Flandry
several years ago, and always have been rather fond of him. Maybe
he Ciin Venture forth again from time to time?” Which is easiest
answered by saying right here — YES!

• At this point, your editor suffered a malaise of the left typing

finger, engendered in part at least by awe of the fluent, wonderful
conversation of Alfred Bester, who stopped in with all his usual
vitality — rendering the word stopped ridiculously out of place in
this sentence. So he does the rest of this . . . after promising that,
in return for this soapbox, he will deliver up unto Venture an ex-
ample in fiction of what he is talking about. Wliich means that we
have started waiting again. ... — RPM

• Science fiction is aging rapidly. The scintillating writers of yester-
day are still glittering, but their work is taking on an antique
lustre. The reason for this is simple: Science fiction is extrapolation,
but the starting point for extrapolation must be the ideas of tomorrow,
not of today or yesterday. You can’t write a penetrating story about
galactic travel if it’s based on a bicycle built for two.

Back in the 19th century people used to visualize what life would
be like in the 20th. Their extrapolations were always based on what
was old and familiar to them. They visualized the future in terms
of a better horse & carriage, bigger steam boats, mid-Victorian utopias
solving mid-Victorian dilemmas. It never occurred to them that the

^continued on p. ISO")

THE EDGE OF THE SEA

by A LG IS BUDRYS

The thing rolling sluggishly in the smashing surf mighi
have been a Navy missile ... or it might not. Whatever it

was, Dan Henry was damn sure he was going to hold on to
it, in spite of the rising hurricane— or anything else.

The Overseas Highway, two
narrow white lanes on yellowed
old concrete piers, lay close to the
shallow water, passed over the
little key, and went on.

All afternoon, the sea had
been rising. Long, greasy-faced
green swells came in from the At-

lantic Ocean and broke on the
shar]i rocks with a sudden up-
surge of surf. At mid-day, the
water had been far down among
the coral heads. But now it was
in the tumbled limestone blocks
and concrete prisms that had been
dumped there to build up the key.

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

In a little while it would be wash-
ing its spume over the highway
itself, and it might well go far-
ther, with the increasing wind.

It was dark with twilight, and
darker with clouds thick as oil
smoke covering the sun over the
Gulf of Me.\ico. The Gulf was
stirring, too, and bayous were
flooding in Louisiana. But it was
over the Atlantic that die hurri-
cane was spinning. It was the
broad, deep, deadly ocean that
the tide and wind were pushing
down through the gloom onto the
side of tlie key where Dan Henry
was struggling grimly, his massive
back and shoulders naked and
running with spray.

His pale eyes were red-rimmed
with salt and his hide slashed
shallowly in a dozen places where
he had lost his balance on the
tiimbletl stones and fallen. He
had been lurching through the
surf all afternoon, working fran-
tically to save what he had seen,
leaden and encrusted, rolling
ponderously at the edge of the wa-
ter. His shirt, the seat covers from
his car — the fan-belt, too — and
what few scraps of rope and wire
had been in the trunk, all had
gone for him to twist into an
incredible rag of a hawser.

The men who built the Over-
seas Highway on the old railroad
right-of-way had built up die little
key, but it was still no more than
a hundred feet in diameter. If the
thing trapped on the rocks had

chosen any other islet to wash
against, there would have been a
reasonable chance of saving it.
But there was no one living here,
and nothing to use for tools or
anchors. The thing was rolling
and grinding against the rocks,
too heavy to float but too bulky to
resist the push of storm-driven
water. There were bright silver
gouges on its thick metal flanks,
and in a litde while it would
break up or break free, and be
lost eidier way. The rope — the
stubborn, futile rope passed
around the two stubby struts at
its nose and wrapped around the
great concrete block it was now
butting at widi brute persistence
— was as much use as though
Dan Henry had been a spider and
tried to hold this thing in a hur-
riedly created web. But he had
had to try, and he was trying
now in another way. He jammed
the soles of his feet against one
concrete block and pushed his
bare shoulders against another.
With his belly ridged and his
thighs bulging, his face contorted
and his hands clenched, he was
trying to push another massive
piece of stone into place behind
the plunging metal tiling, though
his blood might erupt from his
veins and the muscles tear open
his flesh.

The thing was as thick through
as a hogshead, and as long as two
men. There was a tliick-lipped,
scarred opening a foot across at

The Edge of the Sea

one end, where the body rounded
sharply in a hemispherical com-
pound curve. There were three
stumpy fins rooted in the curve,
their tips not extending beyond
the bulge of the body, and two
struts at the blunt nose like horns
on a snail but bent forward so
that the entire thing might have
been fired out of a monstrous can-
non or launched from the tubes
of some unimaginable submarine.
There were no visible openings,
no boltheads, no seams. The en-
tire thing might have been cast of
a piece — might have been solid,
except for the tube in the stem —
and though barnacles clung to it
and moss stained it, though the
rocks gouged it and other blows
had left their older scars on its
pitted surface, still the thing was
not visibly damaged.

Dan Henry strained at the rock,
and sand grated minutely at its
base. But the world turned red
behind his eyes, and his muscles
writhed into venomous knots,
and his breath burned his chest
with the fury of fire. The sea
broke against him and ran into
his nose and mouth. The wind
moaned, and the water hissed
through the rocks, crashing as it
came and gurgling as it drew
back. The thing groaned and
grated with each sluggish move.
The day grew steadily darker.

Dan Henry had stopped his car
on the key at noon, pulling off the

highway onto the one narrow
space of shoulder. He had opened
the glove compartment and taken
out the waxed container of milk
and the now stale sandwich he
had bought in Hallandale, above
Miami, at ten tliat morning. He
lit a cigarette and unwrapped the
sandwich, and began to eat. The
milk had turned warm in the
glove compartment and acquired
an unpleasant taste, but Dan
Henry had never cared how his
food tasted. He paid no attention
to it as he chewed the sandwich
and drank the milk between drags
on the cigarette. He had bought
the food when he stopped for gas,
and when he finished it he
planned to go on immediately,
driving until he reached Key
West.

There was nothing specific
waiting for him there. Nothing in
his life had ever been waiting for
him anywhere. But everywhere
he went, he went as directly and
as efficiently as possible because
that was his nature. He was a
physically powerful, reasonably
intelligent, ugly man who drew
his strength from a knowledge
that nothing could quite overcome
him. He asked no more of the
world. He was thirty years old,
and had been a construction fore-
man, a police officer, an MP ser-
geant in Germany and a long-
haul trailer truck driver. In addi-
tion to these things he had been
born into a derrick rigger’s fam-

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

ily in Oklahoma and raised in his
father’s nomadic, self-sufficient
tradition.

When he first saw the dull
color of metal down among the
rocks, he got out of the car to see
what it was. He was already
thinking in terms of its possible
usefulness when he reached the
thing. Once near it, the idea of
salvage rights came naturally.

Looking at it, he felt imme-
diately that it had to be a military
instrument of some kind. The
Navy, he knew, was constantly
firing rockets from Cape Cana-
veral, up in Central Florida. But
the longer he looked at the thing,
the longer he doubted tliat pos-
sibility. The thing was too mas-
sive, too obviously built to take
the kind of vicious punishment it
was receiving at the hands of the
sea, to be the light, expendable
shell that was a missile prototype
or a high altitude test rocket.
There were tons of metal in it,
and the barnacles were thick on
it. He wondered how long it had
been surging along the bottom,
urged and tumbled by the great
hidden forces of the ocean, drift-
ing this way and tliat until finally
the first high tide this morning,
had heaved it up here to lie
caught and scraping on the rocks,
steaming as it dried under the
early sun.

He did not know what it was,
he decided finally. Rocket, tor-
pedo, shell, bomb, or something

else, whatever it was, it was valu-
able and important. The Navy or
the Army or Air Force would need
it or want it for something.

There was nothing on it to
mark it as anyone’s property. If
anydiing had ever been written
or engraved on that hull, it was
gone now. Fie began to think of
how he might establish his rights
until he could reach a Navy in-
stallation of some kind. The only
reason he had for going to Key
West was that he had a friend in
the sponge diving business down
there. The friend did not know
he was coming, so there was no
reason not to delay for as long as
this business might lake him.

He had begun with nothing
more than that to urge him on,
but as the afternoon grew, the
sea and tlie thing between them
had trapped him.

The thing lay awash witli half
its length over the usual high wa-
ter mark, and even when heTound
it, at low tide, the water curled
among the rocks above it. He had
thought about that, too, but he
had not thought that a hurricane
might have taken an unexpected
turn during the night, while he
drove his old car without a radio
to tell him so. Only when the
clouds turned gray and the water
swirled around his knees like a
pack of hounds grown hungry
did he stop for a moment and look
out to sea.

The Edge

He had been clearing the
smaller rocks away from around
the thing and piling them in an
open-ended square enclosing its
forward sections, and had been
scraping a clean patch in the bar-
nacles with a tire iron. It had
been his intention to make it ob-
vious someone was working on
the tiling, so he could then leave
it and report it with a clear
claim. The few cars going by on
the highway had not stopped or
slowed down — there was no place
to stop, with his car on the bit
of shoulder, and no real reason to
slow down — and after a while the
cars had stopped coming entirely.

It was that, telling him tlie
storm had probably caused the
highway to be blocked off at either
end, together with the look of the
sea, that made him go up to the
car and try to make a hawser.
And by then he could not have
left the thing. It was too obvious
that a man had begun a job of
work here. If he left it now, it
would be too plain that someone
had let himself be backed down.

If he had gotten in his car and
driven away, he would not have
been Dan Henry.

The water was almost com-
pletely over the thing now. He
himself was w'orking with the
waves breaking over his head,
trying to dislodge him. More im-
portant, the thing was rocking
and slipping out of its trap.

The next nearest key was a

of the Sea 9

third of a mile away, bigger tlian
this one, but still uninhabited.
The nearest inhabited place was
Greyhound Key, where the rest
stop was for the buses, and that
was out of sight. It would be bat-
tened down, and probably evacu-
ated. Dan Henry was all alone,
with the highway empty above him
and the sea upon him.

He set his back once more, and
pushed against die concrete block
again. If he could wedge the
diing, even a storm tide might
not be able to take it away from
him. He could untangle his
homemade rope and put the fan
belt back on his car. Then he
could drive away to someplace un-
til die storm died down.

The blood roared in Dan
Henry’s ears, and the encrusted
concrete block opened the hide
over his shoulders. A coughing
grunt burst out of his moudi. The
block teetered — not much, but it
gave a litde way. Dan Henry
locked his knees and braced his
back widi his palms, pushing his
elbows against the block, and
when the next wave threw its
pressure into the balance, he
pushed once more. The block
slipped suddenly away from him,
and he was thrown aside by the
wave, flung into the wet rocks
above. But the thing was wedged.
It could roll and rear as much as
it wanted to, but it could not
flounder back into the sea. Dan
Henry lay over a rock, and wiped

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

the back of his hand across his
bloody moutli in satisfaction.

It was over. He could get out
of here now, and hole up some-
where. After the storm, he would
come back and make sure it was
still here. Then he woidd make
his claim, either at one of the
little Navy stations along the
chain of keys, or at the big base
at Boca Chica. And that would
be that, except for the check in
llie mail. The bruises and breaks
ill his skin would heal over, and
become nothing more than scars.

He took his rope ofF the thing
and took it apart far enough to
pick out tlie fan-belt. He let the
rest of it wash away, shredded. As
he got out of the surging water at
last, he scowled slightly because
he wondered if the car’s spark
plugs weren’t wet.

It was dark now. Not quite
pitch-black, for the hurricane sky
to the west was banded by a last
strip of sulfur-colored light at
the Iiorizon, but dark enough so
tliat his car was only a looming
sha{ie as he climbed up to it.
Then, suddenly, the wet finish
and tlie rusty chrome of the front
bumper were sparkling with the
first pinpoint reflections of far-
away lamps. He turned to look
southward down the highway,
and saw a car coming. As it came
nearer, its headlights let him see
the clouds of spray that billowed
across the glistening road, and

the leaping white heads of break-
ers piling up on the piers and re-
bounding vertically to the level
of the highway. TTie storm was
building up even more quickly
than he’d tfiought. He wondered
what kind of damned fool was
crazy enough to drive the stretches
where the highway crossed open
water between keys, and had his
answer when a spotlight abruptly
reached out and fingered him and
his car. Either the state or the
county police were out looking to
make sure no one was trapped
away from shelter.

The police car pulled up, wet
and hissing, half-blocking the
highway, and tlie driver imme-
diately switched on his red roof
beacon, either through force of
habit or force of training, even
tliough there was no oncoming
traffic to warn. The four rotating
arms of red light tracked monot-
onously over the road, the key,
and the water. By their light, Dan
Henry realized for the first time
that it was raining furiously. The
spotlight was switched off, and
the headlights pointed away, up
the highway. It was the red bea-
con that lit the scene and isolated
the two men inside its color.

The officer did not get out of
tlie car. He waited for Dan Henry
to come around to his side, and
only then cranked his window
down half way.

“Trouble with the car?’’ he
asked, hidden behind the rcflec-

The Edge of the Sea

lion on the glass. Then he must
have thought better of it, seeing
Dan Henry’s broken skin. He
threw the door open quickly, and
slid out with his hand on the
bone-gripped butt of his plated
revolver. He was diick-bodied,
with a burly man’s voice and
brusqueness, and he kept his eyes
narrow'ed. “What’s the story here,
Mac?’’

Dan Henry shook his head.
“No trouble. I was down on the
rocks. Waves threw me around
some.’’

The officer’s uniform pants
and- leather jacket were already
sodden. W’ater ran down his face,
and he wiped it annoyedly out of
his eyes. "What were you doin’
down there? No brains?’’ He
watched carefully, his hand firm
on his gun.

Dan Henry had been a police-
man himself. He was not surprised
at the officer’s attitude. A police-
man was paid to be irritated by
anything diat didn’t have a sim-
ple answer.

“I’v’e got something down there
I was salvaging,’’ he said reason-
ably. “Storm caught me at it
and knocked me around some be-
fore I got finished.” Telling about
it made him realize he was tired
out. He hoped this business with
the policeman would be over in a
hurry, so that he eould fix his car
and get into its shelter. The wind
\vas chilly, and the constant im-
pact of driven water on his skin

was beginning to make him numb.

The officer risked a quick
glance down at the thrashing surf
before he brought his hard eyes
back to Dan Henry. “I don’t see
nothin’. What kind of a thing was
it? What’re you carryin’ that belt
around for?”

"It’s metal,” Dan Henry said.
“Big. Never seen anything just
like it before. I was using the
belt to hold it.”

The officer scowled. “What’s
holdin’ it now? What d’you
mean, big? How big? And how
come I can’t see it?”

“I pushed a rock behind it,”
Dan Henry said patiently. “It’s
damn near as big as a car. And
it’s under water, now.”

“Buddy, that don’t begin to
sound like a likely story.” The po-
liceman pulled his gun out of the
holster and held it down along-
side his thigh. "What kind of a
lookin’ thing is it?”

“Kind of like a rocket, I guess.”
“Now, why the hell didn’t you
say so!” the policeman growled,
relaxing just a little bit. “That
makes sense. It’ll be one of those
Navy jobs. They’ve got ’em drop-
pin’ in the ocean like flies. But
you ain’t goin’ to get anything out
of it, Buddy. That’s government
property. You’re supposed to turn
it in. It’s your duty.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What d’you mean, you don’t
tliink so?” The policeman’s gun
arm was tense again.

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

"It doesn’t look like a Navy
rocket. Doesn’t look like anybody’s
rocket, that I know of. I said it
was kind of like a rocket. Don’t
know what it is, for sure.’’ Now
Dan Henry was growing angry
himself. He didn’t like tlie way
things were going. He kept his at-
tention carefully on the gun.

“Know all about rockets, do
you?”

“I read the papers. This thing
isn’t just a piece. It isn’t the bot-
tom stage or the top stage. It’s one
thing, and it never was part of
anything bigger. And it’s been in
the water maybe a couple of years
without getting broken up. You
show me the Navy rocket that’s
like that.”

The policeman looked at him.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said
slowly. “Tell you what — suppose
you just step over here and put
my spotlight on it. Reach through
the window.” He stepped back
casually.

Dan Henry reached around
and switched the spot on. He
swept it down across the water, a
little startled to see how far up
the breakers had come. Under the
light, the water was a venomous
green, full of foam, rain-splotched
and furiously alive. A gust of
wind rocked the car sharply, and
the light with it. The pale beam
sliot over the sea before it fell
back, reaching beyond the swing-
ing cross of red from the roof bea-
con, and out there the lashing

waves disappeared in a mist of
ram.

He found the thing, finally,
after having to hunt for it. For
an instant he thought it had been
swept away after all, and felt a
stab of sharp anger. But it was
still there, heaving insensately un-
der the waves, with only the dim,
broad mottling of its back near
enough to the surface to be seen
at all, that and a constant stirring
in the water, roiling it like an
animal. “Thcrc-it is.” He was sur-
prised how relieved he felt. “See
it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I seen enough of
it,” the officer said. “You got
somethin’ down there, all right.”
There was a sudden hardness in
his voice, that had been waiting
all along for him to make the
decision that would bring it com-
pletely out. “I got my gun on you,
buddy. Just step back from that
car easy. Anybody foolin’ around
out here in a hurricane must want
somethin’ awful bad. If that
somethin’s a Navy rocket, I guess
I know what kind of a son of a
bitch tliat would be.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dan Henry
whispered to himself. He was an-
gry with the fine-drawn kind of
rage that is almost a pleasure.
And not because the cop thought
he was a Commie, either, Dan
Henry suddenly realized, but be-
cause he persisted in not under-
standing about the rocket. Or
whatever it was.

The Edge of the Sea

He turned around with a
jump. The fan-belt in his hand
whipped out with all the strength
in his arm and all the snap in his
wrist, and snatched the cop’s gun
out of his hand. It skittered across
the wet concrete of the highway,
and Dan Henry pounced after it.
He scooped it up with a scrape of
his finger-tips, and crouched with
the muzzle pointed dead at the
cop’s belly.

"Back off,” he said. "Back off.
You’re not takin’ that thing away
from me. I sweated blood to hang
on to it, and you’re not goin’ to
come along and throw me in jail
to get it away.”

The cop retreated watchfully,
his hands up widiout his being
told, and waited for his chance.
Dan Henry backed him up the
highway until the cop was past
the cars, and opened the door of
his own car. He threw the gun
inside, togedier widi the belt. He
slammed the door and said; "You
can get that back later. Or you
can try and take it away from me
now, barehanded.” He was shak-
ing with the tension in his
bunched shoulders, and his arms
were open wide. He was crouched,
his broad chest deep as his lungs
hunted for more and more oxygen
to wash the rush of blood his heart
was driving through his veins. The
red flood of revolving beacon on
the police car swept over him in
regular flashes.

'Til wait,” die cop said.

"Now,” Dan Henry said, “I
want you to use your radio. I want
you to call in and report this.
Only I want you to report it to
the Navy before you call your
headquarters.”

The cop looked at him with a
puzzled scowl. "You on the level?”
he asked, and Dan Henry could
see him wondering if he hadn’t
made a mistake, somewhere, in
his thinking about what was go-
ing on here. But Dan Henry had
no more dme for him. The wind
was a steady, strong pressure that
made him brace his left leg hard
against it. The water flying across
the highway was coming in solid
chunks, instead of spray, and the
two cars were rocking badly on
their springs. The rain was
streaming over them, leaving die
officer’s jacket a baggy, clinging
mess and pounding on the top
of Dan Henry’s head. The sea
was smashing violently into the
highway piers, thundering to the
wind’s howl, and even here on
solid ground the shock of the im-
pacts was coming clearly up
through Dan Henry’s bones.

His throat was raw. Bit by bit,
he and the officer had had to
raise their voices until diey had
been shouting at each other with-
out realizing it. “Get in the car
and do it!” he yelled, and the
officer came forward as he
backed away to give him room.

The policeman got into his

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

car, with Dan Henry standing
watchfully a little behind the
open doorframe, and switched on
his radio. “Tell tliem where we
are,” Dan Henry said. “Tell them
my name — Daniel Morris Henry
— tell them what I said about
it’s not being one of their rockets
— and tell them I’m claiming
salvage rights. Then you tell tliem
the rest any way you see it.”

The officer grudgingly turned
the dials away from their usual
settings. After a minute, he
picked his microphone out of the
dashboard hanger and began
calling Boca Chica in a stubborn
voice. At intervals, he said
“Over,” and threw the Receive
switch. They heard the peculiar,
grating crackle of radiotelephone
static, trapped in the small
speaker. And only that.

“Look, Buddy,” the policeman
said at last, “we’re not goin’ to
get any answer. Not if we ain’t
got one by now. Boca Chica radio
may be knocked out. Or maybe
my transmitter’s shorted, with all
this wet. Could be anything.”
He jerked his head toward the
water. “How much longer you
want us to stay out here?” Prob-
ably because he had seen so many
hurricanes, he was beginning to
grow nervous.

“Try it again,” Dan Henry
said. He watched the officer
closely, and couldn’t see him
doing anything wrong. Dan
Henry didn’t know the Boca

Chica frequency; that w’as where
the trouble might be. But he’d
used a police radio often enough
so that any otlier trick wouldn’t
have gotten by him.

The officer called Boca Chica
for another five minutes. Then
he stopped again. “No dice. Look,
Buddy, you’ve had it. Maybe
you’re just a guy looking for some
salvage money, like you say you
are. Maybe not. But there’s goin’
to be waves coming across this
road in a little while. Why don’t
we get out of here and straighten
things out when this blows
over?”

Dan Henry set his jaw. “Get
the vibrator out of that radio.
Do it.” Now he had no choice.
If he went with the cop, that was
that. They’d throw him in some
jail for resisting arrest and as-
saulting an officer, and keep him
there until they were good and
ready to let him out. By then,
whatever happened to the thing
down here, somebody would have
figured out some way to get that
Navy check instead of him. The
only thing to do was to cripple
the cop’s radio and send him
down the highway until he
reached a phone. There was no
guarantee that radio wouldn’t
work on the police frequency.

Maybe the cop would call the
Navy right after he called his
headquarters. Or maybe, even if
he didn’t, some higher brass at
the headquarters would report to

The Edge of the Sea

the Navy. Either way — if you be-
lieved it was a Navy rocket or if
you didn’t — it was government
business. Then, maybe, the Navy
would get here before the cops
did. Or soon enough afterwards
so he’d still be here to talk to
them. Once he got taken away
from here, that chance was gone.

On that decision, he was ready
to cling to a hundred-foot key in
the middle of an Atlantic hurri-
cane. "Let’s have that vibrator.
Right now."

The officer looked at him, and
reached slowly under the dash.
He fumbled in the narrow space
where the radio hung, and pulled
the sealed aluminum cylinder out
of its socket. But he was getting
ready to grab for Dan Henry if he
could reach him quickly enough.

"Okay,” Dan Henry said, “drop
it on the road and get out of
here. You can get it back along
with your gun. And just in case
you get some brains in your head,
when you get to a phone, call
the Na— ’’

The policeman had dropped
the vibrator, and the wind had
rolled it under Dan Henry’s
Chevrolet. Dan Henry had been
in the act of letting the open
police car door close, when a
sharp thread of brilliant violet
fire punched up from down in
the green water, through the red
light, up through the rain, up
through the black clouds, and out
to the stars beyond.

‘There’s something in tliat
thing!" the officer blurted.

Dan Henry threw the door
shut. “Get out of here, man!’’

Down in the drowned rocks,
an arc hissed betAveen the two
struts in the thing’s nose. The
water leaped and bubbled around
it, and for all the breakers
could do, still the blaze of light
illuminated the thing and the
rocks it ground against, turning
the sea transparent, and from the
crown of the arc the thin violet
column pointed without waver-
ing, without dispersing, straight
as a line drawn from hell to
heaven.

The police car’s tires smoked
and spun on the pavement. "I’ll
get help,” the officer shouted
dimly over the squeal and the
roar of his engine. Then he had
traction and the car shot away,
headlights slashing, glimmering
in the rain and the spray, lurch-
ing from side to side under the
wind’s hammer, roof beacon turn-
ing at its invarying pace, die
siren’s howl lost quickly in the
boom of the water. And Dan
Henry was left in the violet-
lanced darkness.

Without the windbreak of the
police car in front of him, he
was pushed violently backward
until his own car’s fender stopped
him. Water struck his eyes, and
the night blurred. He bent for-
ward and rubbed his face until

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

the raw ache of the salt was
dulled to a steady throbbing,
and then he staggered across the
highway to the guard rail on the
Atlantic side. The tops of the
incoming waves washed over his
shoes, just as the surf at noon
had lapped at him, twelve feet
below.

The rain and the spray streamed
over him. He cupped one hand
over his nose, to breathe, and
hung on the rail.

There was nothing more to see.
The pillar of light still shot up
from the arc, and the bulk of the
thing loomed, gross and black,
down there in the water. It was
feet below the surface now,
cushioned from the first smash of
the waves, and it stirred with a
smooth, regular motion like a
whale shark in a tank.

The radio, he thought. It had
felt the radio in the police car.
Nothing else had happened to
bring it to life at that particular
moment. It had waited a little —
perhaps analyzing what it had
encountered, perhaps then notic-
ing the regular flash of the car’s
roof beacon for the first time.
And for the first time since the
day, years ago, when it entered
the sea, it had found a reason
for sending out a signal.

To where? Not to him, or the
policemen. The light was not
pointed toward the highway. It
went up, straight up, going out
of sight through the clouds as

his eyes tried to follow it before
the lash of water forced his head
down again.

There was no one inside the
thing, Dan Henry thought. There
couldn’t be. He had scraped on
the side with regular, purposeful
strokes, clearing an exactly square
patch, and gotten no response.
And the thing had lain in the
ocean a long time, sealed up,
dragging its armored hide over
the bottom as the currents
pushed and pulled it, rolling,
twisting, seamless, with only those
two horns with which to feel the
world about it.

He could be wrong, of course.
Something could be alive in there,
still breathing in some fantastic
way from a self-contained air sup-
ply, eating tiny amounts of stored
food, getting rid of its wastes
somehow. But he didn’t see how.
It didn’t seem logical that any-
thing would trap itself like that,
not knowing if it was ever going
to escape.

He could be wrong about it
all. It might not have been re-
acting to anything that hap-
pened on tlie highway. It might
be ignoring everything outside it-
self, and following some purpose
that had nothing to do with this
world or its people. But whether
it was that, or whether he was
at least partly right, Dan Henry
wondered what was sending
things to drop down on the Earth
and make signals to the stars.

The Edge of the Sea

The water came higher. It
came up the key too quickly to
split and go around it, and
spilled over the highway to
plunge into the rocks on the Gulf
side. It broke halfway up tlie side
of his car. He remembered the
policeman’s vibrator. That would
be far to the west of him by now,
skipping at a thrown stone’s
velocity over waves whose tops
were being cut off by the wind.
Dan Henry’s mouth twisted in a
numb grimace. Now he’d have
to buy one. They probably
wouldn’t let him get away that
cheaply. They could make that
stick for a robbery charge. And
destroying public property. While
on the other hand, if he was
swept off this key they wouldn’t
even have to pay for his burial.
He laughed drunkenly.

A wave broke over him. He
had made a sling for himself by
knotting the legs of his dungarees
around one of the guard-rail up-
rights, and when the wave was
past he lolled naked with the
bunched tops of the dungarees
cutting into his chest under his
arms. The wind worked at him
now, Avith a kind of fury he had
never felt by simply putting his
head out through the window of
a speeding car, and then the next
Avave came. It was warm, but the
wind evaporating it as soon as
he was exposed again made his
skin crawl and his teeth chatter.
He reached behind him with a

wooden arm and felt the knot in
the dungaree legs to make sure it
was holding. The pressure had
tightened it into a small hard
lump.

That Avas good, at any rate.
That and the blessed practicality
of the engineers Avho built the
highway. When they laid the
roadway where the hurricane-
smashed railroad had been, they
had cut the rusted rails up Avith
torches, set the stumps deep in
the concrete, and Avelded the
guard rails together out of T-
shaped steel designed to hold a
locomotive’s Aveight.

Dan Henry grinned to him-
self. The rail Avould hold. The
dungarees would hold, or tlie
trademark Avas a liar. Only
about Dan Henry Avas there any
doubt. Dan Henry — hard, sure
Dan Henry, with his chest being
cut in half, with his torn skin
being torn again as the Avaves
beat him against the highway,
with his head going silly because
he Avas being pounded into raw
meat.

Dear God, he thought, am I
doing this for money? No, he
thought as a Avave filled his
nostrils, no, not any more. When
that thing turned its light on and
I didn’t jump in the car Avith
that cop, that’s Avhen we found
out I wasn’t doing it for the
money. For what? God knoAvs.

He floundered half-over on his
side, arched his neck, and looked

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

at the violet arrow through the
clouds. Signal, you bastard! Go
ahead and signal! Do anything.
As long as I know you’re still
there. If you can stay put, so
can I.

Well, what teas he doing this
for? Dan Henry fought with the
sling that held him, trying to take
some of the pressure off his chest.
God knew, but it was up to Dan
Henry to find out for himself.

It wasn’t money. All right —
that was decided. What was left
• — vanity? Big Dan Henry — big,
strong, Dan Henry . . . take
more than a hurricane to stop big,
strong, wonderful Dan Henry —
was that the way his thoughts
were running?

He croaked a laugh. Big,
strong Dan Henry was lying
here limp as a calico doll, naked
as a baby, praying his pants
wouldn’t rip. The storm had
washed the pride out of him as
surely as it had his first interest
in the salvage money.

All right, what, then! He
growled and cursed at his own
stupidity. Here he was, and he
didn’t even know why. Here he
was, being bludgeoned to death,
being drowned, being torn apart
by the wind. He was stuck out
here now, and nobody could save
him.

A wave roared over the high-
way and struck his car a blow
that sent a hubcap careening off
into the darkness. The car tilted

onto the Gulf-side guard rail. The
rail bellied outward, and the car
hung halfway over the rocks on
the other side. Successive waves
smashed into it, exploding in
spray, and tlie guard rail groaned
in the lull after each strike. Dan
Henry watched it dully in the
violet light, with the water sluic-
ing down over his head and
shoulders for a moment before
the wind found it and tore it
away in horizontal strings of
droplets.

The car’s door panels had al-
ready been pushed in, and the
windows were cracked and
bulged. Now the exposed floor-
boards were being hammered.
The muffler was wrenched out.

With the next smash of solid
water, the horizontal rail broke
its weld at one end and the ear
heeled forward to the right, im-
paling its radiator on an upright.
It hung there, gradually tearing
the radiator out of its brackets,
spilling rusty water for one in-
stant before a wave washed it
clean, scraping its front axle
down the sharp edge of the road-
way, breaking loose pieces of the
concrete and raising its left rear
wheel higher and higher. The
radiator came free with a snap
hke a breaking tooth, and the car
dropped suddenly, its front end
caught by the edge of the left
wheel, kept from falling only by
the straining uprights still
jammed against it farther back

The Edge of the Sea

on the right side. The hood flew
back suddenly and was gone with
a twang in one gust of wind.

Am I going to have to buy that
cop a new gun, too? Dan Henry
thought, and in that moment the
wind began to die. The water
hesitated. Three waves rolled
across the road slowly, much
higher than when the wind was
flattening them, but almost gentle.
The rain slackened. And then the
eye of the storm had moved over
him, and he had calm.

He pushed himself to his feet
at last, after he sagged out of
the hold the dungarees had on
his chest. He leaned against the
guard rail and stared woodenly
at the ocean and the thing.

The beam went up out of
sight, a clean, marvelously precise
line. But do^vn at the surface,
the sea was finally hiding the
thing, and making a new noise
that had none of a storm-sea’s
clean imwer. It filled his ears and
unnerved him.

With the wind and the pres-
sure gone, the waves were leaping
upward, clashing against each
otlier, rebounding, colliding
again, peaking sharply. Dan
Henry could hear the highway
over tire water booming faintly
as the waves slammed up against
its underside. But he could ac-
tually see very little. It had
grown sharply darker, and what
he saw were mostly the tops of

the exploding waves, glimmering
pale violet.

The tiring was buried deep,
where it lay at tlie foot of the
key, and the arc that had dif-
fused most of the light was visible
only as a fitful glow that shifted
and danced. The violet beam
seemed to spring into life of it-
self at the plunging surface, and
it kept most of its light com-
pressed within itself.

Dan Henry swayed on the
guard rail. It was stifling hot.
The thick mugginess filled his
lungs and choked him. He lolled
his head back. The clouds were
patchy overhead, and the stars
shone through in places.

There was a sudden high-
pitched chime, and a concentric
circle of comiscating ice-blue
flame came hurtling down the
beam from the thing. It came out
of the sky and shot into the
water, and when it touched the
glimmer of the arc there was an-
other chime, tliis time from the
thing, and this time the water
quivered. The violet beam flick-
ered once, and a red halo spat
up witli a crackle, travelling
slowly. When it was a hundred
feet over Dan Henry’s head it
split in two, leaving one thin
ring moving at the old rate, and
a larger one that suddenly dou-
bled its speed until it split again,
doubled its speed and split again,
accelerated again, and so blazed
upward along the violet beam’s

ventuhe science fiction

axis, leaving a spaced trail of
slowly moving lesser rings behind
it. They hung in the air, a ladder
to the stars. Then they died out
slowly, and before they had
stopped glowing the violet beam
was SM'itched off.

The sky was abruptly empty,
and the thing lay quiescent in tlie
water once more. Dan Henry
blinked at the flashes swimming
across his eyes. It was pitch dark.
He could barely see the white
of swirling water as it dashed
itself into the rocks at his feet.

Except that far up the high-
way, coming toward him, were
two headlights with a swinging
red beacon just above them.

The police car was plastered
with wet leaves and broken palm
fronds. The policeman slammed
it to a halt beside him, and flung
the door open. He stopped long
enough to turn his head and say:
“Jesus Christ! He’s still here! He
ain’t gone!” to someone in the
front seat with him, and then he
jumped out. “What happened?”
he asked Dan Henry. “What was
that business with the lights?”

Dan Henry looked at him.
“You made it,” he mumbled.

“Yeah, I made it. Gk)t to this
Navy skywatch station. Phone
was out, so I couldn’t call in to
headquarters. Found this Navy
professor up there. Brought him
down with me when the eye came
over. He figures we got maybe

twenty minutes more before the
other side of the hurricane comes
around.”

The odier man had slid out of
the car. He was a thin, bony-
faced man with rimless glasses.
He was dressed in a badly fitted
tropical suit that was pleated with
dampness. He looked at Dan
Henry’s purpled chest, and asked;
“Are you all right?”

"Sure.”

The man twitched an eye-
brow. “I’m assigned to die satellite
tracking station north of here.
What is this thing?”

Dan Henry nodded toward it.
"Down there. It got an answer
to Its signal, acknowledged, and
switched off. That’s what I think,
anyhow.”

“You do, eh? Well, you could
be right. In any case, we don’t
have much time. I’ll notify the
naval district commandant’s of-
fice as soon as the telephones are
working again, but I want a quick
look at it now, in case we lose it.”
“We’re not going to lose it,”
Dan Henry growled.

The professor looked at him
sharply. “What makes you sure?”
“I wedged it,” Dan Henry said
with a tight note in his voice.
"I almost ruined myself and I
almost drowned, but I wedged it.
I took a gun away from a cop
to keep it from getting left here
without anybody to watch it.
And I stayed here and got almost
drowned, and almost cut in half,

T}ie Edge of the Sea

and almost beat to death against
this highway here, and xve’re not
going to lose it nmv."

“I . . . see,” the professor
said. He turned to the policeman.
"If you happen to have some
sedatives in your first aid kit,
they might be useful now,” he
murmured.

“Might have something. I’ll
look,” the policeman said with a
quick glance at Dan Henry.

“And put your spodight on the
thing, please,” the professor
added, peering over the guard
rail. “Though I don’t suppose
we’ll see much.”

The yellow beam of the spot-
light slid over the top of the
water. If it penetrated at all, it
still did not reach any part of
the thing. The policeman
hunted for it, sweeping back and
forth until Dan Henry made an
impatient sound, went over to
him, and pointed it straight.
“Now, leave it there. That’s where
it is.”

“Yeah? I don’t see anythin’ but
water.”

“That’s where it is,” Dan Henry
said. “Haven’t been here all this
time for nodiin’.” He went back
to the railing, but there was still
nothing to see.

“You’re sure that’s where it is?”
the professor asked.

“Yes. It’s about ten feet down.”

“All right,” die professor
sighed. “Tell me as much as you
can about its activities.”

“I think it’s a sounding
rocket,” Dan Henry said. “I think
somebody from someplace sent
that thing down here a while ago
to find out diings. I don’t know
what those things are. I don’t
know who drat somebody is. But
I’m pretty sure he lost it, some-
how, and didn’t know where it
was until it signalled him just
now. I don’t know why it worked
out that way. I don’t know why
the rocket couldn’t get its signal
dirough before this, or why it
didn’t go home.”

“You think it’s of extrater-
restrial origin, then?”

Dan Henry looked at the pro-
fessor. “You don’t think so?”

“If I did, I would be on my
way to district headquarters at
this moment, hurricane or no
hurricane,” the professor said
testily.

“You don’t believe it?" Dan
Henry persisted.

The professor grew uneasy.
“No.”

“Wouldn’t you like to believe
it?"

The professor looked quickly
out to sea.

“Here,” the policeman said,
handing Dan Henry a flat brown
half-pint botde. “Sedative.” He
winked.

Dan Henry knocked the bottle
out of the cop’s hand. It broke
on the pavement.

“Look up!” the professor whis-
pered.

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

They turned their heads.
Something huge, flat, and multi-
winged was shadowed faintly on
the stars.

“Oh, Lord,” tlie oflieer said.

There was a burst of chiming
from the thing down in the water,
and violet pulses of light came
up through the water and burst
on the underside of the thing up
in the sky.

Answering darts of tawny gold
came raining down. The thing in
the water stirred, and they could
see the rocks move.

"Tractor rays,” the professor
said in a husky voice. “Theoreti-
cally impossible.”

"What’s it going to do?” the
policeman asked.

"Pick it up,” the professor an-
swered. “And take it back to
wherever it comes from.”

Dan Henry began to curse.

The thing in the sky slipped
down, and they could feel the
air throb. After a moment, the
sound came to them — a distant,
rumbling purr, and a high metal-
lic shrieking.

The thing in the water heaved

itself upward. It struggled against
the rocks.

“We’d better get back,” the pro-
fessor said.

The distant sound grew stronger
and beat upon tlieir ears. The pro-
fessor and the policeman retreated
to the car.

But Dan Henry did not. He
straightened his back and gath-
ered his muscles. As the tawny
fire came down, he leaped over
the guard rail into the water.

He swam with grim fury,
thrown and sucked by the water,
sputtering for breath, his feet
pounding. Even so, he would not
have reached the thing. But the
water humped in the grip of the
force that clutched at the thing,
and the waves collapsed. Dan
Henry’s arms bit through the
water with desperate precision,
and just before the thing broke
free, he was upon it.

“No, sir,” he grunted, closing
his hand on one of the struts.
“Not without me. We’ve been
through too much together.” He
grinned coldly at the hovering
ship as they rose to meet it.

Every science fiction fan knows that
the Moon has no atmosphere. Professor
Asimov, however, makes an educated guess
that quite probably we're all wrong. . . .

THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE MOON

by ISAAC ASIMOV

Now THAT Sputnik has been
successfully launched by Homo
sapiens, artificial satellites are no
longer science-fiction in them-
selves, anymore than airplanes
are. However, there is always the
next step for the s f enthusiast
(thank God) and in this case the
next step is the unmanned mis-
sile that will land on the Moon,
or possibly circle it and come
back to Earth. In either case we
will get new information con-
cerning the Moon.

Like what? Well, there’s the
Moon’s atmosphere, for instance.

But the Moon has no atmos-
phere, you say; every science fic-
tion fan knows that even if he
knows nothing else.

But it has, just tlie same. The
Moon must have an atmosphere.

It can’t avoid having an atmos-
phere. Here’s how you can dem-
onstrate that —

The Earth is made up of two
sections of radically different com-
position (like an egg, which is
made up of a central yolk and a
surrounding white.) The "yolk”
of the Earth is the nickel-iron
core, with a high density roughly
about 10 times that of water.
Around it, the “white” of the
Earth is tlie silicate crust, with a
low density of about 3. The
overall density of Earth is be-
tween those two figures. It comes
to 5.5.

The Moon’s density is 3.3. In
order to be that much less dense
than the Earth, the Moon must
be lacking a sizable nickel-iron

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

core. It must be all “white”, so
to speak, and consist of a silicate
crust only.

It is reasonable to suppose that
the elementary composition of the
Moon is about the same, then, as
that of the Earth’s silicate crust.
The two were formed at the same
time out of the same materials.
The Earth’s crust is about 214
percent potassium and we can as-
sume the same figure for the
Moon as a whole. (Why potas-
sium? Well, I’ll explain soon.)

The mass of tlicMoon is 7.343
X 10^'* grams. (That’s about 73
trillion trillion grams, if expo-
nential figures nauseate you.) The
mass of potassium in the Moon
is therefore about 1.8 x 10-^
grams (or just under two trillion
trillion grams. )

There are three varieties of po-
tassium atoms in existence. Two
of them, potassium-39 and po-
tassium-41, make up just about
99.99 percent of the total. How-
ever, 0.0119 percent of the total
consists of the rare isotope, po-
tassium-40, and that’s the inter-
esting one.

The total mass of potassium-
40 on the Moon comes to 2.14 x
10*” grams (just over two hun-
dred million trillion grams.)

The unusual thing about potas-
sium-40 is that it is radioactive.
It has a half-life of 1.3 billion
years, which means that in that
period of time, half the atoms of
potassium-40 in existence break

down. Most of tlie atoms that
break down (89 percent to be
exact) give off an electron and
become stable atoms of calcium-
40. The nuclei of the remaining
1 1 percent, however, take up
electrons from the surrounding en-
vironment and become stable
atoms of argon-40.

Using the equation (a simple
one, luckily) that expresses the
rate of breakdown of radioactive
atoms, it can be calculated that
on die Moon, 3,600 grams (or
just about 8 pounds) of potas-
sium-40 are breaking down each
second. As a result of that break-
down, 3,240 grams (7% pounds)
of calcium-40 and 360 grams
(% of a pound) of argon-40 are
formed each second.

It is the argon-40 you want to
keep your eye on, since argon is a
gas and that means the Moon is
constantly forming an atmos-
phere of its own. Of course, 360
grams of argon aren’t much, but
if that much is formed each sec-
ond and if the seconds keep pil-
ing up . . .

Furthermore, there was more
potassium-40 present in the
Moon (and everywhere) in die
past than there is now. About 1.3
billion years ago, there was twice
as much and four billion years
ago there was eight times as
much as there is today.

If we calculate the amount of
argon formed over the four billion
years that the Moon has been a

The Atmosphere of the Moon

solid body and make allowance
for the greater quantity of po-
tassium-40 present in the past, it
turns out that the total quantity
of argon formed in all that time
is 1.5 X 10^® grams. This is a
large figure. It comes to about
170 trillion tons of argon.

To give you an idea how large
a figure that is, it represents
nearly three times as much argon
as is present in our own atmos-
phere (which argon, incidentally,
was and is heing formed from our
own potassium-40.)

If all that argon were present
on the surface of the Moon, our
satellite would have an atmos-
phere with a mass Vsoih of ours.
Furthermore, since the Moon’s sur-
face is only that of the

Earth, its atmosphere would be
crowded together until it were just
about half as dense as that of
Earth.

Well, the Moon has no such
atmosphere as we very well know.
What, then, has happened to the
Moon’s argon?

First, the potassium-40 is
spread throughout the volume of
the Moon. Argon that happens to
he formed in the outer layers of
Moon-rock can make its way to
the surface, but argon formed
deep down would be trapped.
(This is true of the argon formed
on Earth, too. The quantity of
argon trapped within the Earth
is certainly five times as great

and may be as much as fifteen
times as great as the amount in
the atmosphere.)

But even if only of the
Moon’s argon were on the sur-
face, the Moon would still have
an atmosphere with a density
some three percent that of the
Earth’s atmosphere. However,
even that much is out of the
question.

Another point arises. The
Moon’s gravitational field is only
% that of the Earth and is sim-
ply not powerful enough to hold
on to the argon. The Moon loses
its argon to outer space almost as
quickly as that argon comes leak-
ing out of the Moon’s rocks.

Almost! It takes a certain time
for the argon to make its way
clear of the Moon, so that there
is always some argon (not much)
present in the neighborhood of
the Moon’s surface. That is why
I said that the Moon must have
an atmosphere.

As a matter of fact, some
astronomers at Cambridge Uni-
versity, observing the radio waves
emitted hy various celestial ob-
jects, studied the behavior of
those waves that happened to
skim the surface of the Moon on
their way to Earth. Those radio
waves were slightly disturbed and
it was calculated that the dis-
turbance was due to a Lunar at-
mosphere of charged particles
equal in density to a ten-tril-
lionth of our atmosphere.

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

That counts only charged par-
ticles. Neutral argon atoms, which
might be much in the majority,
would not be observed. My own
calculations (which depend, I
must admit in a whisper, on a
sheaf of some very shaky assump-
tions) lead me to predict that die
Moon has an argon atmosphere
with a density of up to about a
billionth of our own atmosphere.

Now you may suppose that an
atmosphere even as much as a
billionth of ours doesn’t deserve
the name of atmosphere, but that
may not be so. To be sure such
an atmosphere is a better vacuum
than any we can make on Earth,
but it is not a complete vacuum.

As I write this. Sputnik is
moving through die outer fringes
of Earth’s atmosphere at a point
where the gas density is less than
a billionth of an atmosphere and
yet the friction involved is enough
to slow Sputnik gradually and,
after a period of time (weeks,
months, years?), send it crash-

ing to Earth. The Moon’s tiny
atmosphere may therefore serve to
help brake a ship landing on the
Moon and cut down the quantity
of fuel that will have to be used
for braking. That will save that
much fuel for the return voyage.

And believe me, in our first
trips to the Moon, anything that
will save even a small amount of
fuel, may make all the difference.
So let’s hope the unmanned mis-
sile brings back news of argon,
even in traces. It will be bound
to mean an additional step in ad-
vancing the greatest single theme
of science-fiction toward reality.

NOTE TO TYPESETTER

The figure 2,000,000,000,000,-
000,000,000,000 is not two tril-
lion as erroneously reported at the
end of my article FECUNDITY
LIMITED (January 1958) but
two trillion trillion. It’s only a
missing word but it makes all the
difference between one cent and
ten billion dollars. — i.a.

THE TALL PSYCHIATRIST

by DICK HETSCHEL

The psychiatrist was unmoved when the very small man
began his story of the distant planet with extraordinary
attractions. About midway, however, his interest picked
up sharply — became, you might say, almost unprofessional.

It took only a glance
around tlic waiting room to tell
him that Dr. Ossifer was not one
of the more successful members
of his profession. The furniture,
Second World Empire style,
showed its age, the activipictures
on the wall were cheap and jerky
in their color changes, the whole
effect dingy. Sam Munoz thumbed
through the worn magazines on
the stand, settled for a May, 2 1 1 8,
Interplanetary Tales, and setded
back as comfortably as the chair
and his taut nerves would allow.

The door beside him opened
without warning. "You’re Mr.
Munoz?’’ Sam noticed first that
the psychiatrist was tall, at least
six and a half feet — just as he
had expected. About thirty-five,
the doctor had a large, bony head
that reached upward from a wide
spread of shoulders. His arms
were long and powerful, and
while he may have been a little
topheavy, Sam noted that he
looked good and strong.

Sam got up. “Yes. And you’re
Dr. Ossifer?’’ While they shook
hands the doctor gazed down at
him, apparently noticing for the
first time how short he was. Then
Dr. Ossifer squared his magnifi-
cent shoulders and said, “Won’t
you follow me, Mr. Munoz?’’

The office was small, and Sam
sat uneasily on the edge of the
couch while Dr. Ossifer fired
name-age-birthplace questions at
him.

“Now, Mr. Munoz,” the doctor
said when that was done, "I want
you to relax and forget your wor-
ries and tell me everything that’s
troubling you. I am a psychiatrist,”
he ran a hand through thick black
hair, “and am trained to help you,
so feel at ease to unburden your-
self."

Sam creased his eyebrows wor-
riedly. “I . . . I. . . .” He
looked at tlie floor confusedly. “I’ve
had a great shock, sir.”

“Good,” said Dr. Ossifer; “now
suppose you tell me all about it.”

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

Sam gnawed his upper lip,
looked frightened for a moment.
‘‘Well, to begin with, I was always
smaller than the other boys in my
neighborhood. And I got beat up
whenever I got into a fight and
later on the girls didn’t seem to
care much for me . . .” He
paused.

“Splendid,” said the doctor,
scribbling in his notebook. “And
then what happened?” He gave a
quick glance at his patient. “I am
a jisychiatrist, Mr. Munoz, so
don’t be afraid to speak right out.”
He smiled a bony smile.

Sam tried a weak smile in re-
turn. “Well, when I was small I
thought I’d grow up as big as the
rest and be able to hold my own,
so I didn’t feel too badly, but in-
stead it got worse and worse. I
was an inch shorter than the rest
and then two. inches and then
shorter and shorter. You can see,
sir, that now that I’m fully grown
I’m only four-foot-ten.”

The doctor looked at him in-
tently for a moment, then back
at his notes. “Yes, go on . . .”
Sam looked down at his feet.
“There are lots of disadvantages to
being short, you know. And I
wanted so desperately to be tall
and strong. I — ”

The psychiatrist interrupted
him. “But four-foot-four isn’t real-
ly so very short. Lots of great men
have been short. It can be used as
a spur, you know. Napoleon — ”
“Not four-foot-four,” Sam cor-

rected him. “I’m four-foot-ten.
And you don’t realize how I felt
about it. I didn’t want to be Na-
poleon. I just wanted to be tall,
to be admired for my strength, my
appearance. I suppose it preyed
on my mind, and . . . Well, sir,
the way it turned out I came to
have a strange fear of tall per-
sons. While I admired them almost
desperately, I was afraid to be
near them — as though I felt too
insignificant to be in their pres-
ence; I couldn’t think of things to
say . . . and so forth.”

The little man took a deep
breath. "Especially with very tall
peoole. I don’t know why, sir.”

The psychiatrist swung his chair
around to face him. “But I’m six-
foot-seven, Mr. Munoz. I don’t
frighten you, do I?” He squared
his shoulders and smiled crooked-
ly-

Sam shuddered. “Well, not ex-
actly. But ... I know it’s silly,
but that’s part of my problem,
and — ”

“Well, you mustn’t be afraid to
speak to me. After all, I am a
psychiatrist. Now just relax, Mr.
Munoz. I believe you said some-
thing about a shock.”

Sam looked sick for a moment.
“Yes, a shock, a terrible shock. It
began when — ”

“Now just lie back there and
relax, Mr. Munoz, and tell me aU
about it, slowly and easily. Don’t
feel nervous or ill-at-ease, Mr.
Munoz. I am a psychiatrist.”

The Tall Psychiatrist

Sam lay back uneasily, his legs
bent up at the knees, and stared
at the ceiling.

"It began about ten years ago,
\vhen I was twenty,” he began. "I
was too short to get into any of
the space services, but I was hit
hard by the romance of it all. Lots
of guys my age were, you know.

"I read all tli'e fan magazines
and all the model news and all
the space stories and pretty soon
I had one special hero.

"You may have heard of him.
He was John Wilberhatch and he
was a sort of lone w'olf of space,
not a fictional hero, but a real
explorer from the fan magazines
and newspapers. He lived in Cali-
fornia and had a wife and two
kids and a lot of money, but he
spent most of his time scouting
around the unexplored stars in his
one-man ship and hunting for
strange kinds of fife. I don’t know
if it was his hobby or if he earned
his money that way.

"Anyw’ay, he was six-feet-five-
inches tall and I suppose I sort
of identified myself with him
when I read tire newspaper write-
ups of his trips and the books and
articles he \vrote.

"He was pretty well knowm
back then — I don’t suppose you
recall him?”

"No,” said the psychiatrist.

The man on the couch looked
disappointed. "Well, back in
2109, he returned from a trip
that had touched on many new

planets way out on the rim some-
where, and Space Age published
an article he had written.

'The article told of some of the
worlds he had visited and the
kinds of life he had found on
diem and I read it just as though
I were visiting all those worlds
myself until . . . until T came to
one world that belonged to a
large white star. And then . . .”

The psychiatrist looked up af-
ter half a minute of silence. The
man on the couch was lying with
his face turned to the wall. "Go
on,” Dr. Ossifer said in a kindly
voice, “this is costing you by the
hour.”

Sam Munoz kept his face to
the wall, but he resumed his
story. “I suppose you know how it
is,” he said, "about interstellar
travel and exploration. The new
drive o],iened hundreds of thou-
sands of new stars twenty, thirty
years ago, and not many of them
are explored even yet. Since we
have all the raw materials and
space we need with the nearest
ones, the further stars are just ex-
plored by adventurers and then
pretty much forgotten.

“This one planet John Wilber-
hatch visited got quite a bit of
attention in the papers, but he
had no proof of what he said he
found there and since he had
neglected to take pictures or any-^
thing nobody really believed him.
His reputation M'asn’t too good in
some ways, anyway, but the real

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

reason was that his coordinates
for the parent star were wTong —
there was no such star there. He
said that was probably due to some
little mistake he made jotting
down the numbers in his records.

“The authorities didn’t believe
his story because he said he found
human beings living on the plan-
et, and he —

“Human beings?" interrupted
the psychiatrist.

“Yes,” Sam Munoz went on.
“There never had been a planet
found before where humans had
evolved, and there hasn’t been
since, so it was a very important
discovery if it were true.

“Anyway, according to John
Wilberhatch’s story, it was a
world much like Earth, green,
with trees and lots of ocean, and
its air good for breathing, and he
saw the towns and landed near
one of them.

“The people were friendly and
not as far advanced mechanically
as here on Earth and they aver-
aged a little smaller and quite a
bit weaker physically than Earth
humans — due, John Wilberhatch
supposed, to a slightly weaker
gravity; otherwise they were com-
pletely human.

“And they were very hospitable
and John Wilberhatch stayed
among them for several months
and learned their language and
studied their ways and their gov-
ernment and so on.

“And it was their government

that interested me particularly
and I think you’ll see why when
I tell you. I still know that part of
the article by heart, I reread it so
many times in the next few years.
It went like this : -

“'To me, one of the most ni-
ter esting things about their cul-
ture is its stability. Tradition plays
a large part in their lives, but
nowhere is it more apparent or un-
challenged than in their methods
of government. Every third year of
their time contests are held
throughout the inhabitated por-
tions of the planet. Winners of
these go on to further contests
which culminate in a great tourn-
ament in their capital. The win-
ner of these elimination contests
meets their current ruler in a final
match, the winner of which gov-
erns the planet for the next three
years. The matches consist entire-
ly of feats of strength; thus, the
physically strongest man on the
planet rules it.

“ ‘A man newly established as
ruler personally picks the remain-
der of the government, usually
putting his friends and acquaint-
ances and sometimes his entire
village into choice positions. Cus-
tom plays such a large part in
their lives, though, that much
government is not needed — just
enough to fill the gaps, so to
speak. Therefore, both the num-
ber of government positions and
the extent of government power
are rigidly circumscribed by cus-

The Tall Psychiatrist

tom, effectively preventing any
ruler from increasing his power
and taking over permanently. The
ruler is allowed, as his right of
office, two castles in different cli-
mates, a court including 120 per-
sonal servants, a harem of his
choice of any seven girls in the
world, and a few other such
token luxuries. But to overstep any
of his privileges would be un-
heard of.

“ 'That this form of government
has been able to last without im-
portant change for several thou-
sand of their years seems due to
several factors, first and foremost
of which is tlie race’s pleasant
and easy-going disposition. Added
to this is the fact that the army
organized to fight the Gorlne-
neths is not in any way central-
ized; it is composed entirely of
loosely cooperating privates, as it
were, and could not be used as
an instrument of absolute rule.
Also there is the menace of the
Gorlneneths tliemselves, an ever-
present danger which prevents the
people from dividing among them-
selves, as well as providing an out-
let for misfits and the overly-ag-
gressive. . . .’

"The Gorlneneths are huge fly-
ing reptiles — like dragons,” ex-
plained Sam Munoz. “They aren’t
intelligent, but are so vicious the
humans are able to live only on
the small section of the planet
that’s too cool for the Gorlneneth’s
liking; and even that has tO- be

guarded carefully against raids or
migrations from overcrowded
areas of the Gorlneneth’s domain.
John Wilberhatch explains all that
in another part of the article.”

“But how does all this tie in
with you, Mr. Munoz?” asked the
psychiatrist.

"You mean you don’t sec?” Sam
Munoz looked aroung desperately
as though he hated to come right
out and say what he meant.
"Don’t you remember about the
people of this planet being a little
slighter, on the average, than
Earth-people, and being quite a
bit weaker, because of the lower
gravity — don’t you remember
tiiat?”

"Well, yes, but — ?”

"Then maybe I didn’t tell what
John Wilberhatch said about the
people of the planet. For all their
weakness, they are much hand-
somer on the average than the
people of Earth, the women are
particularly beautiful. The atmos-
phere makes their complexions, for
example, much better than we’re
used to on Earth, John Wilber-
hatch said, and their proportions
are — well, they’re just — just — ”

“Oh, yes!” said Dr. Ossifer sud-
denly. “I think I see what you
mean.” He peered intently at Sam
for a moment. "Go on! Go on! I
am a psychiatrist and you can tell
me everything. What happened
then?”

"Well, sir. I’m only four-foot-
ten, but I’m fairly strong for my

VENTUEE SCIENCE FICTION

size, and I was sure that if I
could find the planet. . .

“Yes, yes, I can see all that.
But what happened then? Did you
find the planet? Why didn’t you
go see this John Wilberhatch and
. . Dr. Ossifer blinked his eyes
rapidly for a moment, then scrib-
bled at his notes.

“Well, actually I was working
up my courage to do just that,”
the little man said; “but first he
was away on another exploration
and then he came back just in time
to enter a rocket-plane race being
held in Fresno. And that race
... I watched that race on sol-
ivision and >"00 can imagine my
feelings as I watched his plane
glide down the runway, slide into
the air, gain about a thousand
feet altitude and then ... ex-
plode!”

“Explode?” the psychiatrist
echoed. “You mean — ?”

“It exploded. Later I read in
the newspaper the story of his
death and a review of the won-
derful tilings he had clone out in
space, and could hardly keep from
crying. The plane was blown en-
tirely to dust.”

“And that was the terrible
shock you spoke of?” Dr. Ossifer
frowned at the scribbled papers
in front of him.

“No! No! It wasn’t that at all.
It was much worse than that. It
was a terrible thing! It was a ter-
rible thing!”

The psychiatrist brightened.

“Well, go ahead then — I’m listen-
ing. what happened next?”

Sam Munoz had gradually
turned his face from the wall as
he spoke, and now he lay on his
back, and his eyes staring at the
ceiling were alive with memories.

“I didn’t give up,” he went on.
"I decided to risk everything, to
devote the rest of my life, if neces-
sary, to finding that planet. First
I studied astrogation, or at least
some rudiments of it; and then I
went to work with the figures
John Wilberhatch had given for
the planet — the incorrect ones.

“I figured that if he had actu-
ally made a careless mistake in
jotting down his figures — and I
banked everything on that — then
they would be entirely correct ex-
cept for some one figure. So I
t(K)k each number in his plotting,
one at a time, and changed it to
each of the other nine numbers
it could have been, plotting the
point each time. There were thir-
ty-six figures in John Wilber-
hatch’s plotting, which gave me
324 different points, but not one
of them was dead center on a sun
or even terribly close.

“I realized then that a great
deal of accuracy was improbable
anyway, with the star charts of
such remote areas and John Wil-
berhatch’s figures both undoubted-
ly somewhat less than exact..

“So I finally chose the fourteen
plottings nearest to white suns
and decided to investigate them.

The Tall Psychiatrist

I carefully plotted the shortest
course that would touch all of
them, and that was a job because
those fourteen stars were scat-
tered over the Universe. I figured
the cost of fuel needed to cover
the distance, the cost of a ship
sturdy enough, and all the addi-
tional expenditures that would be
involved. Then I worked like a
slave for six years to save that
amount and —

"Anyway, to pass over a lot of
work and despair, I found the
planet on my twelfth stop.”

"You found it! Then you really
— he really . . . ? Go on, Mr.
Munoz — what happened next?"
The psychiatrist seemed complete-
ly to have forgotten his notes and
had been sitting for some time
slumped in his chair idly scratch-
ing around in his hair with the
point of his pencil. Now he
straightened up and sat motion-
less as he listened.

"The people were just as John
Wilberhatch had said,” Sam
Munoz went on. "They were very
friendly, and several families in a
village near where I landed took
turns boarding me. Later on they
were even more friendly — after
they had seen how strong I was
and they began to think I stood a
good chance of tvinning the big
tournament and becoming the
ruler and giving them all good
jiositions in my government.

"The next tournament was a
little over a year off when I landed

and their years were pretty nearly
the same as ours, so I had a chance
to learn a good deal about tire
people where I was staying.

"The Gorlneneths were their
only real trouble and my village
was far from even the Gorlneneth
danger zones. The entire popula-
tion contributed to the army that
battled the Gorlneneths, though,
and in a manner that I had not
counted upon.

“It seemed all the losers in the
tliree-year contests had to enter
the army for a period of seven
years. This served several pur-
poses. It assured a steady supply
of the strongest and best men of
the planet for the battle against
their bitterest enemy, it assured
that no coward would become
ruler, and it put losers of the con-
test out of circulation for the next
two contests, so if a current ruler
bested a strong challenger once he
would not have to worry about
him again for nine years.

“I practiced at wrestling occa-
sionally at local get-togethers and,
to my relief and joy, was more
than a match for any of the vil-
lagers. Though all were taller than
me, averaging about five-foot-ten
or so, they were of slighter build
and much, much weaker.

"I was so happy there diat the
time seemed to fly and soon it
was time for the contest to begin.
You should have seen the excite-
ment. This was the big holiday
for all of them. Of course no one

venture science fiction

in my village expected to win be-
cause each man knew I could beat
him easily, but all were hoping to
ride into power with me.

“The contests w^ere divided into
two parts: the first part comprised
five tests, running, throwing, lift-
ing, high jumping and broad jump-
ing. The second part was simple
wrestling with rules almost identi-
cal to our own. The contestants
were matched off against one an-
other and the winner of three out
of five of the events in the first
part was given one point over his
opponent. Then came the wrest-
ling, which was the most impor-
tant. There were two falls and
each counted for one point, so if a
man won both falls at wrestling he
could lose the first part of the con-
test and still be the victor. The
first half was largely to add to the
fun of it and only counted if the
wrestling falls were divided.

“In the local contest I had the
rest pretty well scared off and the
only three who entered with me
were intending to enter the army
anyway. I won the two contests
I had to fight on four straight falls.

“Then I travelled about twenty
miles to another village for the
area contests, with most of my
village coming along to cheer me
on. I fought four contests this time
and won all easily.

“Then came a still higher tour-
nament, about a hundred miles
off, and I won again. Two more
tournaments and we v'ere head-

ing for the capital, I and a rooting
section of my villagers, who had
never before placed a candidate in
the finals and were almost as
thrilled by their first trip to the
capital as hy the prospect of the
coming battle.

“The latest contests had grown
more difficult as I met more ad-
vanced contestants, but I had still
not come near to losing a single
fall and all in all I felt mighty
hopeful.

“The capital has a huge square
directly under the castle walls —
the main castle of the ruler —
where the finals are held. I
couldn't help eying the magnifi-
cent building a bit covetously and
wondering what it would be like
inside.

“There were 128 finalists,
which meant there were seven
more contests for me to pass be-
fore I could meet the present rul-
er. The first five matches were
easy; the last two a little tougher,
but though I lost most of the run-
ning tests and a few of the throw-
ing tests, I had still not lost a
single wrestling fall when the
drums began to announce the final
contest between the present ruler
and the challenger.

"The ruler and his retinue had
watched the previous matches from
the high windows of the castle
that overshadowed the square and
heretofore I had not caught a
glimpse of my next opponent, but
now a procession began to move

The Tall Psychiatrist

slowly out from the great gates of
the castle into the square. In its
center was a huge ornate carriage.
Its occupant or occupants were
hidden from view by a silver cur-
tain across the front of it.”

The little man was silent for a
moment, and when the psychia-
trist glanced at him he noticed
that he was trembling.

“I . . . moved away from my
supporters out into the center of
the square and waited, my arms
folded. The royal wagon w'as
stopped at tire edge of the crowd
and . . . and the curtains were
drawn back while the people
cheered and yelled and . . . the
ruler stepped out and . . . and
. . .” Sam Munoz shuddered.

Dr. Ossifer asked, ‘‘He was
much bigger than the rest?”

Sam Munoz said softly, ‘‘He
was John Wilberhatch!”

“No!” exclaimed the psychia-
trist, visibly startled. “Not . . .
not . . . John Wilberhatch!”

Sam Munoz nodded sadly.
“John Wilberhatch, my hero!” He
stifled a visible impulse to turn his
head to the wall again. “That was
the shock I was telling you about.”
Dr. Ossifer was aghast. “This is
very serious! You must be a very
sick man, Mr. Munoz!”

Sam nodded dumbly.

“Well, what happened then?
Did he beat you?”

“I , . . I’d rather not speak of
that.”

The doctor squirmed in his

chair. “Come now, you can tell me,
Mr. Munoz. I’m a psychiatrist.
What happened next, Mr. Mun-
oz?”

The little man fidgeted as
though being tortured. “He w’as
. . . really very nice about it. He
was careful not to hurt me, and
after he beat me in the first half of
the contest he let me win one of
the falls at wrestling. He was quite
good about it. I — ”

“But you said all the losers had
to serve seven years in the army,”
interrupted Dr. Ossifer. “Did you
have to do that?”

“Well, I would have had to,
but John Wilberhatch w’as very
nice about that, too. He had sev-
eral of his seri'ants sneak me back
to my ship and let me leave the
planet. I had only to promise
never to come back or tell anyone
the location of the planet. This
was only fair as by now John
Wilberhatch was no longer a
young man, and with middle-age
and years of living on a light-
gravity planet, he could hardly
have defended his crown against
Earthmen very much bigger and
stronger than me.

“You see,” Sam W'ent on, “John
Wilberhatch didn’t really die in
the explosion of his rocket-plane.
When he was returning from his
last exploration, he had a slight
idea in his mind that he might
want to go back, so he changed
one number in his plotting, think-
ing that if he decided definitely

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

not to return he could give out tlie
real figures and pretend he had
found his mistake. Then when he
did decide to go back he took out
a good insurance policy to protect
his wife and children and arranged
a fake crash. There was actually
no one in his plane when it ex-
ploded. He had built dummy con-
trols into it and it took off auto-
matically and blew up automati-
cally.”

“A nasty trick on his family,”
mused the psychiatrist, “though
I’m. glad he had the decency to
provide for their future.” He shook
his head as though to clear it.
“Mr. Munoz, about your problem
now, I believe I must advise you
. . . to . . . did you say six-
foot-five, this John Wilberhatch?
Middle-aged?”

“. . . uh . . . yes.”

“This is an awful mess, Mr.
Munoz, and I hope you don’t ex-
pect me to fix it up in one day.
However, I think we can . . .
how many wives did you say,
seven?”

“Yes, seven, sir.”

“Mr. Munoz, your troubles ob-
viously go back to this planet lo-
cated in — whereabouts did you
say this planet was?”

“I don’t believe I mentioned it.”
“. . . uh, Mr. Munoz, I’m
. . . as you must have noticed.
I’m six-foot-seven and . . . just
where is this planet, Mr. Munoz?
What are its coordinates?”

Sam Munoz looked frightened

suddenly. “I couldn’t jwssibly tell
anyone that! I promised John
Wil— ”

The psychiatrist looked shocked.
“Please don’t misunderstand me,
Mr. Munoz. This is for you! I’ve
come to the conclusion — the pro-
fessional conclusion — that it’s the
discrepancy between deeply bur-
ied feelings of hate you carry to-
ward John Wilberhatch and your
feeling of responsibility toward
him in keeping his secret that is
causing a large part of your trou-
ble. As a first step toward efiEect-
ing a cure you must unburden
yourself of this supposedly invio-
late information to some safe and
understanding person — someone,
if possible, with only a professional
interest. And I obviously am that
person. I am a psychiatrist.”

Sam looked more worried than
ever. “But, I couldn’t — ”

“But you must! I am your doc-
tor!”

The little man had to make a
great effort to speak. “No, Dr. Os-
sifer, I . . . I’m afraid you might
. . . you intend . . .”

Dr, Ossifer had been straining
forward in his chair toward his
patient. Now he relaxed; he even
managed a bony smile. “All right,
I’ll admit it. I might . . . think
about going to that planet. But
don’t you see, you owe nothing to
John Wilberhatch. He had no right
to force you to make promises.
You were not a citizen of his
planet, but of Earth, and you had

The Tall Psychiatrist

a right to leave any time you
wished, regardless o£ their laws.
And it will do you all the good
in the world to turn a trick on
him at last, after all the grief he’s
caused you.”

“No, Dr. Oss— ”

"Call me George!”

"No, uh . . . George, I could
never go back on — ”

Dr. Ossifer leaned forward
again. ". . . and, besides. I’m
willing to pay you one thousand
planetaries for the location of that
planet, as a recompense for all the
money it took you to find it.”

The little man was adamant.
"No! And, for that matter, it cost
me a lot more than a thousand
planetaries to find that world. But
I came here as a patient, George.
What about my problem?”

"The hell with your problem!”
the doctor almost screamed. "Don’t
you realize ... I hate being a
psychiatrist! What is it, day after
day, problems to solve, stories to
listen to, sometimes I . . . Stor-
ies to listen to, problems all the
time, troubles, stupid troubles!
Oh, it’s a terrible life for a sensi-
tive person like me! And my
home life; you should . . . Mr.
Munoz, you’ve got to help me!
2000 planetaries!”

Sam Munoz sat up on the
couch and crossed his arms. "I
would not think of going back on
my word to John Wilberhatch —
for 2000 planetaries. This is a
point of honor and you can’t expect

a gentleman to sell his honor . . .
for 2000 planetaries!”

The psychiatrist almost whis-
pered. "How much . . . would
it take to make you remember the
dirty trick John Wilberhatch
played on his wife and children —
and all the money and years you
lost because of that dirty trick?”
He leaned toward the little man,
his eyes slitted, his breath thick.

Sam Munoz thought a while.
Finally he said simply, "20,000
planetaries!”

The psychiatrist moved back-
ward as though he had been
struck. “20,000 planetaries! Why,
that’s more than I earn in two
years! And I’m a psychiatrist!”
"It’s still not really very much
money, nowadays,” suggested Sam
Munoz defensively, taken a little
aback by the psychiatrist’s vio-
lence. "Hardly enough to live in
real style for even one year.”

Dr. Ossifer winced, then bright-
ened. "Suppose I looked up the
figures John W’ilberhatch gave out
and juggle them the way you did
and investigate the best fourteen
the way you did?” he suggested
cagily. "Then I wouldn’t have to
pay you anything.”

The little man smiled shyly.
"The search would cost you much
more, though, and quite a few
years. You wouldn’t want
that , . . ?”

Sadly, the psychiatrist gave in.
"I think I may be able to raise
20,000 planetaries,” he said wear-

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

ily. "Shall I meet you tomorrow
with the money and . .

And at that moment, near a
small white star on the outer rim
of the spiral nebula in Cannes
Venatici, two spaceships pulled
abreast, a line snaked through
space from one to the other, and a
heavily suited figure handed
across from one to the other.

“Well, this is a surprise, find-
ing another Earthman out here.”

“It certainly is! I understood
Earthmen were about one jier ten-
million stars out this far. I've been
doing a little prospecting; and
you

“Exploring just for tlie hell of
it. I’m Dr. Ralph Hammerstein of
New York City.”

“A doctor! Well—”

“A psychiatrist, actually.”

The other man’s mouth dropped
open. “I’m a psychiatrist, too,” he
said slowly. "Henrik Anderson of
Bombay.”

"You are . . . ?” A strange
look came into tall Ralph Ham-
merstein ’s face. “And you’re not,
by any chance, looking for an elu-
sive planet that’s supposed to cir-
cle this star . . . ?”

Tall, grim-cyed Henrik Ander-
son chimed in. “An extremely elu-
sive planet, about tlie size of
Earth, but Just a little smal-
ler .. . ?”

Then both together :

“Did you have a patient, a
small man about four-foot-ten,
who . . . ?”

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EVE AND THE TWENTY-THREE ADAMS

by ROBERT SILVERBERG

Space regulations provided that military ships under-
taking voyages of six months or more must carry Crevr
Girls. They did not, however, specify girls like Eve—
for which the Navy can be very, very grateful. . . .

Her name was Eve. I don’t
think I was the first man she
made a fool of, and I don’t care,
but — for very personal reasons —
I earnestly hope I’m the last.

The twenty-ninth of August,
2240, was the first time I ever
saw her. That, you’ll remember,
was the first month of the Sirian
war. War had been in tlie offing
for nine or ten years or maybe
more, ever since it became obvi-
ous tliat human and Sirian were
never going to agree on who was
to sell what to which planets of
the galaxy. A trade collision is a
common cause of wars. It prob-
ably destroyed ancient Troy. We
didn’t want it to destroy Earth.

When the war broke out, I was
stationed on Venus, in the capac-
ity of Psych Officer to the crew
of the destroyer Donnybrook. The
Donnybrook and its crew of twen-
ty-three had been in virtual dry-

dock for nearly two years : the ship
resting on its haunches in the Ve-
nusport spaceyards, the crew as-
signed to ground duty patrolling
the border that separated the Ter-
ran settlements from the untamed
formaldehyde jungles of Venus.
Dull work, but we drew outplanet
double pay, and there were
enough women in Venusport to
keep the bunch happy.

Then the war broke out. And
within a week the Donnybrook
had its flight orders. Off to the
region of Sirius to join the attack
on the enemy’s home world. We
were to leave in four days.

I was happy about the assign-
ment, even though I was some-
what old for duty in a war-zone.
My brother was among the top
brass of the forces in the Sirian
campaign, and I had two nephews
and a son who would be in the
front line of assault (the son a

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

product of an Earthside marriage
before I shed my wife and ap-
plied for space duty.) At least,
I thought I had relatives at the
front. Space communication is a
slow business at best, and I hadn’t
heard from any of them in a long
time. But anyway, I didn’t want
to be the only slacker in the fam-
ily, so I was pleased to be shipped
to the front. So were the men, of
course.

There was one tiling that had
to be taken care of before we
could blast off for Sirius — our
crew was incomplete for a long
trip. It’s a journey of eight light-
years to Sirius, and even under
the super-light nullspace drive it
takes eight blessed months to
get there from the Sol system.
And space regulations provide that
military ships undertaking voy-
ages of six months or more must,
repeat must carry Crew Girls in
an approximate one-to-twenty ra-
tio.

So I formally called the fact
to Captain Bannister’s attention,
and he drew up a formal notiee
that we were accepting applica-
tions, and a jetman named Stet-
son rode downtown to Venusport
Central and posted the notice
with the Employment Bureau.

Half an hour later, we had our
first applicant for the job.

Her name was Eve. I didn’t
call her tliat, of course, because
I was twice her age, and it would-

n’t be military. I called her Miss
Tyler.

She showed up at the residen-
tial barracks at quarter past four-
teen that afternoon, which meant
she must have seen the notice and
fled down to make application
with the speed of light. The first
I knew of her arrival was the
sound of subdued whistling out-
side. Then an orderly knocked,
entered, and said, “Beg pardon,
sir. There’s a girl waiting outside
to see you about the position
aboard the Donnybrook."

I straightened my hair and ad-
justed my decorations and waited.
Hiring Crew Girls is officially the
Captain’s job, but in practice it’s
invariably delegated to the Psych
Officer. The Captain merely ini-
tials the sheet.

She came in. She was young,
and she was pretty. Modestly
dressed, in a trim, tight Venusuit,
and she had light brown hair,
clear blue eyes, a pink complexion,
and pleasantly smiling full lips.
Her figure didn’t overpower me,
but it wasn’t hard to look at ei-
ther.

She looked like a Nice Girl. I
couldn’t imagine why she wanted
the job.

“My name is Eve Tyler, Cap-
tain,” she said in a thin, tension-
choked voice.

I smiled. “I’m not the Captain
— just the Psych Officer. You can
call me Lieutenant Harper. Or
Dr. Harper, if you Hke that. Or

Eve and the Twenty-three Adams

just Harper. Sit down, Miss Ty-
ler.”

She sat. She kept her feet
tucked under her and her knees
close together. She handed me a
sheaf of medical forms and affi-
davits testifying that she was in
good health and qualified for the
job. I took them, riffled quickly
through them, and put them aside.
I said, "You’re applying for the
job of Crew Girl on the Donny-
brook, right?”

"Yes, sir.”

"How old are you?”
"Twenty-two, sir.”

It was about w'hat I figured.
“Ever been married?”

"No, sir.”

"Engaged?”

She shifted uneasily. "No, sir.”

I could tell it was a lie, but I
passed it over. I started to see the
pattern : the girl had been en-
gaged, the engagement had fiz-
zled, and instead of bemoaning
her fate she was signing up as a
Crew Girl. A neat form of revenge
on the man who had spumed her,
if he happened to think in old-
fashioned puritanical terms.

"You understand the responsi-
bilities of the job, of course. There
are twenty-three men assigned to
the Donnyhrook. You’ll be the
only woman. It’ll be an eight-
month voyage, and you know
what your job will be during those
eight months. Our men are sensi-
ble and intelligent, but tliey’ll be
under a terrible strain during an

eight-month nullspace crossing.
You’ll be vital to the success of
the trip. You understand all that?”
'Tes,” she said in a half-whis-
per.

"Good. Now, you’re not re-
quired to ship out with the same
crew twice, unless you want to
do so and they have no objections.
In other words, when we get to
our destination you can apply for
a transfer to another ship or even
request to leave the service. We
don’t hold girls prisoners. The
pay is good, but the work’s de-
manding. You’ll have to be moth-
er, wife, and mistress to twenty-
tliree men for eight months. Are
you still interested?”

"There’s nothing I w'ant more
in the world,” she said. "If you’ll
tell me I can have the job — ”

"I’ll let you know tomorrow,
Miss Tyler. I’ll have to consider
the other applicants too.”

Panic flickered over her face.
"Doctor Harper, this is terribly im-
portant to me, getting this job.”

"I’ll do what I can,” I promised.

I gave her a paternal smile ancT
ushered her out. By that time there
were a dozen more girls waiting
outside to be interview'ed. I had
them sent in one by one.

They came in all sizes and
shapes and varieties. There was a
vast rotund Nordic Earth-Mother
type, and a hard anglebodied for-
tyish type. There was the usual
quota of spaceport girls, tough
and unlovely and professional,

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

looking for steady employ. There
were a couple of space widows
who wanted to bring their infants
with them to Sirius. Sloppy ones,
neat ones, thin ones, fat ones —
fifty or sixty must have passed
through my office that day.

But my mind kept going back
to tlie first one, Eve Tyler. I had
never seen a Crew Girl of that
sort. She looked like the girl next
door, everybody’s sweetheart, a
good cleancut kid. And she was
too young, too pure-looking, I
thought, to be slobbered over by
twenty-three spacemen in rut —

Then I shook my head. I was
looking at this in groundside
terms, and that was all wrong.
What mattered was that she was
good for the crew. She was old
enough to know what she was do-
ing; I had no business fretting
over her sweetness which was
probably all in my imagination
anyway. Space travel is a job for
grownups. And this girl had
charm, looks, appeal. Hell, I
thought. She wants to go. And the
crew will like her. What am I
waiting for?

I called her that night and told
her tlie job was hers. She practi-
cally kissed me by visiphone in
her joy.

We blasted for Sirius three days
later. It was a good clean blastoff.
We rose from Venus on jets,
popped through the cloud layer,
switched to rockets while we

headed toward the first of our
nullspace congruencies, and en-
tered nullspace with ease.

It looked like it was going to
be smooth sailing all the way. I
couldn’t have been more wrong.

We gave Eve the Crew Girl
cabin near the galley, tire only
one with a double bed and a dou-
ble-size porthole for romantic
viewing of the splendors outside.
She set to work fixing it up — it
hadn’t been occupied for three
years — and later that first day in-
vited die Captain and myself to
come see.

She had it fixed up with chintz
curtains and some green plants
borrowed from the ’ponies sec-
tion belowdecks, and it looked
bright and colorful and cheery. I
smiled at the Captain and he
smiled at me. It looked as if Eve
would turn out all right.

There was an unwritten con-
vention aboard military ships that
nobody requisitioned the Crew
Girl for the first forty-eight hours
of nullspace time. It was partly
to uphold dignity, and partly be-
cause during the first forty-eight
hours every man of the crew is
fully occupied with the very deli-
cate business of getting the voyage
underway. The crew of a de-
stroyer is a precisely-designed ma-
chine; there isn’t a superfluous
man aboard.

I traveled round the ship talk-
ing to the men, keeping eyes wide
for signs of psychic tension. Ten-

Ere and the Twenty-three Adnins

■sion is deadly ozi a spaceship. Null-
space travel requires infinitely pre-
cise calculations and reactions,
and if a man’s guts are curdled
by worry he might just make tlie
tenth-of-a-second error that could
bring us out of nullspace into the
blazing heart of a sun.

That was why spaceships car-
ried Psych Officers. And one of
the most valuable — no, the most
valuable — of the Psych Officer’s
tools for reducing shipboard ten-
sion was die Crew Girl. They talk
a lot about the soothing touch of
the female, and it’s all true.

They didn’t carry' Crew Girls
in the old days. Space travel was
a masculine monopoly, especially
in view of the 30% accident rate.
But then the psychologists started
doing some checking into tension
on board spaceships, and found
out diat a good percentage of it
resulted from sexual deprivation.
A lot of men sealed in a tin can
for eight months or a year, with
no stops en route, could get aw-
fully jumpy awfully fast.

There was the case of the
Vengeful, in ’79. They made a
wrong transition on a Vega hop
and came out near Procyon. Three
years later the Titan, bound for
Altair, didn’t have such good luck;
it took a wrong turn and came
out of warp right inside the
photosphere of Betelgeuse. After
that tragedy, they started making
Crew Girls mandatory.

Late on the second day, I saw

a couple of the men getting jumpy.
I had an ample stock of tran-
quillizers in the stores, but the
best tranquillizer I know is a wom-
an’s affection, so I suggested to
them that they rearrange sched-
ules and make the acquaintance
of our new Crew Girl.

There were three of them —
Cafuzzi, Leonards, and Marshall.
We had some intricate three-way
Alphonse-Gaston maneuvers, none
of them caring to seem any more
eager than the others, and finally
I suggested a draw. Marshall won.
He grinned, punched in his off-
duty signal, and headed down the
companionway toward the chintz-
decorated Crew Girl cabin.

He came back about five minutes
later, when I was still chiv\ 7 ing
Leonards and Cafuzzi, trying to
ease some of their early-hours
nervousness. A tough congmency
transition was coming up in an
hour, and I knew they were
worried.

"Here comes Marshall,’’ Cafuz-
zi said suddenly.

"Yeah. Good old Minute-Man
Marshall,’’ Leonards said.

I turned. "That was pretty
quick, Leo. You take the express?’’

He grinned shamefacedly. "Sor-
ry, gents, I didn’t go near her.
She said she didn’t feel up to any
partying right now. Said she had
a touch of spacefever.’’

I should have felt a twinge of
terror when he said that. But be-
cause I was unwilling to admit

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

to myself tlie possibility that we
might be in serious trouble, and
because I did not want to discover
that I had made a fatal mistake of
judgment, and particularly be-
cause I did not want to alarm the
men, I simply said, "I guess I’d
better have the Medie look at her.
We don't want her getting sick,
do we?”

Half an hour later I was in my
cabin working over the crew psych-
charts when the intercom buzzed.
I switched it on. It was Tolbert-
son, ship’s Medical Officer.

"Harp, I just had a look at that
Crew' Girl of l ours. The one with
spacefever.”

"How is she? Better, I hope.”

"Harper, she’s got a totally new
kind of spacefever. One witliout
any symptoms whatever. The diag-
nostat comes up with an absolute
blank. No fever, no abnormal cell
count, no difficulties with vision,
no nothing. There’s a slight dis-
turbance on the neural level, but
we all have that from time to
time. The machine says she’s per-
fectly healthy. She says she’s sick.
Well?”

I stumbled over my words as I
said, "Guess it’s something brand
new, eh, Bert? Maybe you need
a new diagnostat.”

"Maybe you need a new ra-
tionalization,” Tolbertson said
sharply. "That girl’s faking. What
she has is chronic malingering,
and I don’t have any medicine for

that. She’s your baby, Harp. You
better go see her.”

He rang off. I called the galley
and told Cookie to add a generous
sprinkle of antistimulant to the
food until further notice. He
grinned at me and said, "Until
Eve’s feeling better, huh, Doc?”
"Yeah,” I said tunelessly. "Un-
til Eve’s feeling better.”

I switched off the visiphone
and stared at myself for a mo-
ment in my cabin mirror. My face
never looked pretty, but now it
scared me. It looked grey and
soggy. And frightened. I contem-
plated taking one of my own pills,
but decided against it. I went for-
ward to visit Eve.

She w’as lying off to one side
of that big double bed when I
entered; she hadn’t bothered to
get up, simply said "Come in” and
waited. I switched on the light.
She rolled over and looked at me.
It didn’t take Psych Officer’s train-
ing to see that she’d been crying.
Crew Girls aren’t supposed to cry.
Crew Girls are supposed to be
happy playmates twenty-four
hours per shipboard day. I was
worr^'ing.

I donned my Kindly-Old-Doc-
Harper personality and said,
"What’s wrong. Eve? Dr. Tolbert-
son just called me and said — ”

“ — and said that there was
nothing wrong witli me and that
I had damned w’ell better come
to life. Is that it?”

I fumed inwardly. Tolbertson

Ere attd the Twenty-three Adams

had never been known for his tact.
“He did tell me you weren’t suf-
fering from any organic ailment.
But you told Leo Marshall you
didn’t feel well.’’

“I don’t.”

“Can you tell me what the
trouble is? You’re very important
to the ship, you know. Men under
strain make mistakes, and when
you have a hundred and fifty null-
space transitions to make in a sin-
gle trip you don’t dare make mis-
takes as much as once. And you’re
the only member of tlie crew
whose job can’t be done by some-
one else.”

She turned away from me. I
heard something like a sob.

I put my hand on her shoulder
and pulled her to a half-sitting
position. She looked at me gravely
— like a little girl, I thought, a
little girl! — and said, “It was just
the change in environment. Doc-
tor. I’m starting to feel better. Just
give me a day or two more, will
you please? The men can wait that
long, can’t they?”

She smiled imploringly at me.
I began to sweat. “Okay,” I said.
“It takes time to get adjusted.
We’ll let a couple of days go by.
Try not to get the men stirred up
until you’re ready to follow
through, though.”

I looked down at her. She
seemed terribly young and alone,
and now I couldn’t picture her
in the role of Crew Girl at all.
Sipping sodas in an Earthside

drugstore, maybe, but nothing
more than that. Somehow she had
hoodooed me into giving her a
job she was hardly more qualified
for than I was. I suspected I had
made a whopper of a mistake
and as I had told Eve, in this
business there’s no second chance.

Two days went by. Eve min-
gled with die crew, ate with them
— the food was doctored, of
course, but that could only be a
temporary expedient — and joked
with them. Those two days were
hell. She became everybody’s
sweetheart; there wasn’t a man on
board. Captain Bannister and self
included, who didn’t love her
wholeheartedly.

That was the worst part of it.
We w'ere accustomed to Crew
Girls who were just highgrade
sluts, or sometimes lowgrade ones.
This trip we had a gem — but she
was untouchable. At least, for
those two days. I promised the
men it was only temporary, that
in another two days she’d be do-
ing her job like any other Crew
Girl. It was a picked crew, sensi-
tive, understanding. They didn’t
grumble too much, and the stuff
in the food helped. I handed out
a record number of chlorproma-
zine derivatives in those two days,
and somehow we survived the
nullspace transition.

It was four days till the next
one.

We were beyond the orbit of

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

Pluto, crossing the vast nothing-
ness between us and Sirius. Null-
space travel involves a series of
consecutive jumps through con-
gruities, gateways in and out of
nullspace. The whereabouts of
these congruities have been very
well plotted. There were a hun-
dred fifty of them between Venus
and our rendezvous-point, the
moon of Sirius IX, and guiding
the ship through each opening
was a job of cosmic needle-thread-
ing that no computer in existence
could handle alone.

There had to be men to help.
Frail, mortal human beings. But
they had to have their minds fully
and totally on their work, to suc-
ceed. They couldn’t be brooding
about the blonde in Mrs. Raffer-
ty's at Venusport — she was back
in the other direction. There had
to be an accessible woman on
board; that was a fact of life, and
there was no disputing its validity.

When Eve’s two days of grace
were up, I told Second Computer-
man Stetson to pay her a visit.
Stetson was the most randy mem-
ber of the crew at that moment,
and I figured Eve had had time
enough to adjust.

I chewed my nails and paced
my cabin and finally resorted to a
chlorpromazine tablet while wait-
ing for Stetson to report back to
me. I hoped Eve had come across.

But he looked perplexed and
overstrung as he came into the
cabin. “Well?” I asked.

He shrugged. "I went to bed
with her. We cozied up and kissed
and hugged. But she wouldn’t —
she wouldn’t let me — Christ, Doc,
what kind of Crew Girl did you
get us this trip?”

I gave him something to calm
him down and told him to take
an hour off duty. I sat staring
at the ragged edges of my finger-
nails a while, doodling erotic sym-
bols on my desk blotter and won-
dering what I did next.

The situation got more critical
while I sat there. I got a call
from the astrogation deck. It was
Chief Astrogator Hammell, and he
was angry.

"Harper, what’s with this Crew
Girl?”

“What do you mean?” I asked
innocently.

"You know damn well what I
mean. Look, we were plotting the
next transition, and I spotted Mc-
Kenzie getting edgy. So 1 sent him
off-duty and told him to pay Eve
a visit. While he was gone I
checked his work, and it was cock-
eyed by two whole course-minutes.
The computer would have kicked
it back for correction, of course,
and this time it wouldn’t have
hurt us, but that’s not the point.
And now Mac comes back here
with the news that Eve still isn’t
in the mood. Dammit, Harper,
how can we get to Sirius with a
coy Crew Girl?”

We couldn’t. I said so, in a
tension-jagged voice. Then I said.

Ere and the Tiventy-three Adams

“I was just about to notify Cap-
tain Bannister. The matter will
have to be gone oyer by a Council
of Five.”

A Council of Five was called
only in time of emergency, to set-
tle important ship problems. It
consisted of the Captain, the
Psych Officer, the Medical Officer,
tlie Chief Astrogator, and a repre-
sentative of the crew — in this
case, Mike Leonards. We met in
Bannister’s cabin, the five of us
sitting in a semi-circle facing a
pale, harried-looking Eve Tyler.

“Let me get this absolutely
clear. Eve,” Bannister said. He
stroke in a level, controlled voice,
and I admired him for it. I knew
he felt like shoving both Eve and
me through the fuel hatch. “You
say you came aboard this ship with
no intention whatever of perform-
mg the duties of a Crew Girl?”

“Not — all the duties, sir,” she
said in a barely audible voice.

“In other words, you prac-
ticed deliberate misrepresentation.
Why?”

She stared at her feet. I felt
pity for her, even tlien. She said,
“My — fiance is stationed in the
Sirian sector. He may not return
to the Solar System for years. Or
he may never come back. I —
wanted to go to him.”

“And so you committed this
fraud?” Bannister demanded.

“Civilians aren’t allowed into
the war zone, sir,” she said faint-

ly. “This was the only way I could
get to him. I knew it was wrong,
and I’m sorry — ”

“Sorry!” Medic Tolbcrtson burst
out. “Virtually condemning us all
to death by depriving us of a Crew
Girl’s services, and she’s sorry 1”

“Please, Bert,” Bannister said.
He glared at me for a moment,
and I tried to hide in my chair.
He said, “Do you understand the
importance of the Crew Girl in
a ship’s complement. Eve? It isn’t
just to satisfy lust, to use the ob-
solete term. It’s simply that most
of us are slaves to our biological
constitution. We’re built to seek
relief; and while there isn’t one
of us who couldn’t go witliout a
woman for eight months — or eight
years — and manage, the depriva-
tion would have other effects.
Daydreaming. Loss of concentra-
tion. Development of intracrew
friction. Any one of these is fatal
in nullspace travel.”

“I hadn’t considered tliat, sir,”
the miserable girl said.

“Obviously not. Well, we’re too
far out from Venus to turn back,
but not so far out that we can’t
manage anjway with you. If you’ll
take cognizance of your responsi-
bilities and start doing your job
as of now, we’ll forget this whole
session. Fair enough?”

She shook her head numbly.
“Captain, I should tell you — I —
I’ve ne\’er been with a man be-
fore. I wanted my fiance to — to

VENTUIIE SCIEM.E FICTION

She Stopped. Bannister went
paper-white and turned a look of
W'rath on me such as I had never
yet seen from mortal man. I
W'ould voluntarily have stepped
outside without a suit at that mo-
ment. For a veteran and suppos-
edly competent Psych Officer to
hire, of all things, a lurgin Crew
Girl—!

Bannister said to me icily,
“There are certain physiological re-
quirements, Harper, which a Crew
Girl must have. Regulations pro-
vide that she have documentary
proof of these qualifications.
Well?”

“She show’cd me medical pa-
pers,” I said helplessly. “Sworn af-
fidavits. I can’t understand how —
I don’t— I—”

I looked at Eve. Quietly she
said, “They were fakes. I gave a
passport-forger a hundred fifty
pay-units to do the job, certificates
and all.”

“Very well. Eve," Bannister
said in a strangled voice. “You’d
better return to your quarters and
stay there.”

She left without looking back.
The Captain broke the flinty si-
lence tliat follow’ed by saying,
“Harper, we’ll overlook the matter
of your idiocy in hiring tliis girl,
because roasting you won’t solve
our immediate problem. Tm open
for gems of wisdom from any of
you.”

"As I see it,” Tolbertson said,
"It isn’t a matter for debate. With

all due respect for the girl’s emo-
tions and inhibitions, either we
put her into use at once — forcibly,
if necessary — or else shove her
through the fuel hatch and hope
to get to Sirius alive.”

“Is it that black and white?”
Hammell asked. “Couldn’t we try
to manage, and let the girl live?”

Tolbertson shook his head. “If
she stayed among us and still re-
fused herself, the situation would
become explosive in no time. No
woman at all is better than one
who’s here and who doesn’t help
out.”

I looked at Bannister. The cap-
tain w'as, I knew, a deeply hu-
mane man. He would find it near-
ly impossible to order the girl
available for w'hat amounted to
regular rape for the next eight
months; and that almost cer-
tainly would not solve our prob-
lem anyway. And it would hardly
be easy to order her death.

Finally Bannister said heavily,
“I’m afraid Tolbertson’s right. The
girl's more of a menace on board
in her present frame of mind than
if we had no Crew Girl at all.
I’ll issue an order for her disiwsal.”

“No! Wait!” Guilt had been
surging through me, and I had
been searching frantically for
some way out.

I tried to smile. 'Til admit I
was bamboozled by a pretty face,
and signed her on without inten-
sive psych-examination. It’s the
second time in my life I made the

Eve a?id the Twenty-three Adams

mistake of believing what a
%voman said to me, and the odier
time — ” I frowned — “was a quar-
ter of a centur}' ago, on Earth.
Enough apology, though. There’s
a way we can use Eve as our Crew
Girl, and without scarring her per-
sonality for the rest of her life.”

Bannister’s eyes narrowed.
“How?”

‘There’s a drug,” I said. “Tol-
bertson knows about it. I won’t
trouble you with its name, which
is a yard long, but I do have some
of it in my stores. It’s an aceto-
phenone-based compound with so-
porific qualities. It performs a
neat, temporary, and non-habitu-
ating short-circuiting of the rea-
soning centers.”

Tolbertson said, “Of course!
It’s unpleasant, but — ”

I went on ; “We could dose
Eve with that. And keep her
dosed for the next eight months,
during which time she’d function
as nothing more or less than an
ambulatory sex machine. At
journey’s end we pull her off the
stuff, give her the post-hypnotic
suggestion tliat she spent the trip
in utmost purity, and turn her
over to her boyfriend. Neither of
them will be any the wiser for it,
nobody gets hurt, and we’ll have
a Crew Girl.”

Leonards said, “It’s a lousy
thing to do. She’d be as helpless
as — a baby. We’d have to spoon-
feed her. Somebody would have to
dress her every day.”

I shrugged. “The idea’s repug-
nant to me. But so is dying — and
I’m still a competent enough Psych
Officer to tell you that tliere’s a
case of rampant jitters all over
this ship. I wouldn’t want to quote
odds on our surviving another
hundred and thirty-odd transi-
tions, the M'^ay things are going.”

It went round and round the
five of us for twenty minutes. No-
body liked the idea especially, but
nobody had any alternatives. Ban-
nister put it to a vote, and the
count was five in favor, none op-
posed.

It was my job to give Eve the
drug. I entered her quarters with-
out knocking. Llnsurprisingly, she
had gone into convulsive hyster-
ics and lay curled in a tight whun-
pering ball on the big bed.

I sat next to her, stroking her
hair and soothing her as if she
were a daughter of mine and not
— my God! — a spaceship’s Crew
Girl. Then I said, “Everytliing’s
going to be okay, Eve. Nobody
will touch you. Here — I brought
something to calm you. Take it.”

She sat up and looked at me
trustingly, and I hated myself. I
gave her the capsule and a glass
of water and she gulped it down.
I talked to her quietly for twenty
minutes, and watched coldly and
emotionlessly as the personality
that had been Eve Tyler drained
from her face. Her eyes became
blank, her lips drooped in a child-

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

ish smile, and every sign of intel-
ligence vanished from her.

Then I sat in the half-darkness
staring at her for perhaps five
minutes, saying nothing, simply
looking at the pretty empty hulk
that had been the girl.

It's for the common good, I told
myself. A matter of survival. Stark
necessity. But I did not convince
myself. I rose, finally, and went
outside. Bannister was waiting
there for me.

“Well?” the Captain asked.

I nodded silently and headed
to my cabin. I called Stetson, and
told him to go to the Crew Girl’s
compartment for recreational
purposes. By this time Bannister
had informed the crew of the way
things stood vis-a-vis Eve; they
knew she’d been turned into a re-
ceptive zombie who would not re-
fuse them an) thing.

Later, Stetson returned. "It was
damn strange. Doc,” he said. “Like
niaking love to a ghost. I’d say.
But she’s a warm enough ghost.
I’ll say that for her.”

And so it went. The Donny-
hrook streaked toward Sirius
through the dark night of null-
space, and we passed transition-
point after transition-point with
no mishaps. Tension was reduced
to a minimum aboard the ship.

The men giew used to the way
Eve was, and soon found no inhi-
bitions in themselves against visit-
ing her. There wasn’t a man
aboard ship who didn’t make use

of her, the Captain and myself
included. Some often, some not so
often, depending on the man’s
own particular rhythm of exist-
ence. But she was always there,
always willing.

We took care of her, dressed
her, fed her; after a while she
learned to do some of the simpler
things herself. I would often find
her at the viewplate in her room,
staring out uncomprehendingly at
the vastness.

My own guilt-feelings dwin-
dled. Inexorable motivations had
forced us to do what we did, and
in any event she had committed
a grave offense by signing on un-
der false colors. Everything about
the situation seemed heading for
a neat resolution: we would reach
Sirius alive, and she would never
know the part she had played in
the voyage. Purity, I told myself
as a Psych Officer and a scientist,
was a matter of the mind, not of
physical behavior — and so far as
Eve Tyler and her fiance knew,
she had kept herself pure for him.

The months passed. Landing-
time drew near. We passed
through the final transition-point,
emerging into space near tire radi-
ant splendor of Sirius, and made
our way tortuously through the
battle zone to the Terran outpost
on the moon of Sirius IX, where
we would be assigned to immedi-
ate combat duty.

Landing-day arrived. The bleak
face of the big moon liovercd op-

Ere and the Twenty-three Adams

pressively in our viewports. We
could see the Terran fortifications
below, heavily armed.

I woke Eve.

She groped her way to con-
sciousness as I neutralized the
drug that had veiled her mind for
so long. She looked about uncer-
tainly. Her eyes showed life again,
not mere mindless existing.

"Hello, Eve,” I said. "We’re al-
most ready to land.”

"So — soon?” They were her
first words in nearly eight months.
"We’ve only been travelling a few
days.”

"It just seems that way. The
whole eight months is up. Eve.
We’ll be landing in a couple of
hours.”

She smiled. 'Tve been having
the strangest dream, you know?”
A blush crept over her face. “I
couldn’t tell you about it, tliough.
I wouldn’t darel"

I took advantage of her drowsi-
ness to send her into the hy'pnotic
state, and dictated to her subcon-
scious an account of the voyage,
from beginning to end, on a ship
which had through superhuman
effort done without the services
of a Crew Girl. Then I woke her
again, chatted with her a while,
and left.

It had been the best of a bad
deal, I thought. I had myself con-
vinced that everything would
work out for the best for Eve.
"Nobody gets hurt,” I’d told Cap-
tain Bannister, and it looked as

though I’d been right. Nonethe-
less, it had been a strange trip for
all of us. Eve and her twenty-
three Adams, and only Eve of all
of us would ever forget it.

We made a good landing. We
discovered that the war was going
well, that the Sirians were now
on the defensive, that witli a few
more Terran ships on the way we’d
soon have them on the run.

Captain Bannister turned Eve
over to the groundside authorities
that first day, explaining that she
had not found Crew Girl duties
much to her liking, and requesting
that a position be found for her on
the base staff.

We were still in the main ad-
ministrative building, getting
briefed on the situation, when I
got a call. Irrationally, I hoped it
might be my son Dan; he was
somewhere in the war zone, and
the probability was good that he’d
be at this very outpost.

My irrational hunch turned out
to be right. The face in the screen
belonged to Captain Dan Harper
of the Seventh Space Fleet.

"Dad? I hear you just got here
on the Donnybrook. Welcome to
the scene of hostilities.”

I fumbled for things to say to
him. We were practically stran-
gers. I hadn’t seen him in over
two years, not since his assign-
ment to the Sirian sector, and
had had only a couple of sketchy
letters from him. I said lamely,

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

“How’s everytliing been, son? I
guess tJiey keep you busy out here.”
“I get all the combat I’d ever
want.” He chuckled, and a warm
smile spread over his face. “Dad,
you don’t know it, but I owe you
some thanks.”

“For what?”

“Well, from what Eve says, I
figure you never got my last let-
ter, so you don’t realize I’m just
before getting married — and that
you made it possible.”

“From what Eve says? How
could you know Eve yet? We just
got here! And who are you mar-
rying?”

Dan’s grin got even bigger. "I
know Eve already because I knew
her two years ago. And it’s a good
thing I know her pretty well, be-
cause she’s the girl I’m marrying!”
"Eve! Our Crew Girl?” I could
have bitten my tongue in small
chunks for saying that — but it
didn’t matter.

Because Dan roared witlr laugh-

ter. ”Eve — ” he said finally, when
he got hold of himself — “Eve
told me about how she’d fooled
you. Matter of fact, she feels a
little bad about it. But I told her
since nobody got hurt, since the
Domiybrook got here okay — and
she got here — she ought to forget
it. And when you come stand up
for me in the main chapel tonight,
you tell her the same. She’ll be-
lieve you. . . .”

‘Tou’re right, Dan,” I said
slowly. “She’ll believe me . . .
and nobody got hurt. . . .”

Nobody got hurt, I said to my-
self after I’d clicked oft. Purity
is solely in the mind, and I am
a man of science and know this
to be a fact. I will remember this,
and at the xvedding tonight 1 xvill
greet Eve with the love and re-
spect I xvould have for my own
daughter. . . .

They tell me that I did. I don’t
remember it though, because at
the time I was blind drunk.

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VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION
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THERE AIN7 NO OTHER ROADS

by ROBERT MARNER

This gun in the store window was the most beautiful handgun
I'd ever seen. When my friend pulled the trigger, nothing
happened, but the storekeeper made him keep it anyway.
"When the time comes to use it," he said, "you will know how."

When I was grown some, I
left my uncle’s place and got a
ride working on a sailfish cruiser
up to Key West. My folks were
in New York. They were going to
send my uncle money to get me up
there. Maybe they did. I never
saw it. Anyw’ay, I bummed rides

up U. S. 1 for a while. But it
was mostly walking, and one day
I took a wrong turn.

It was a hot day — terribly hot,
with dust in the air to cake the
sweat burns around my eyes —
and I lay there on the gravel bank
beside the road, looking up at the

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

blazing sun with blood all over
my jaw. The biggest one of these
three farm boys was getting ready
to kick me again, but he stopped.
The three of them — the big one
with the green-edged teeth and the
two smaller ratty looking ones —
stopped and just stood looking
over my head.

I rolled over about halfway and
twisted my head back as much as
I could. All I could see was a
pair of dusty old boots and two
thin ankles in khaki pants, up on
the edge of the ditch. “Get away
from him,” a voice with a rusty
edge said, and these three farm
boys nodded, once, together, pale
as hell, and scrambled up the
other side of the ditch and into
the corn stubble in that field.
They loped across it. Then they
were gone and I never saw or
heard of them again.

The thin legs came down the
bank beside me. The man touched
me in the ribs with a finger of his
left hand.

"Don’t do that,” I told him.

"Try coughing,” he said, and I
looked at his face. There wasn’t
anything special about it; just
thin, and maybe forty or fifty or
thirty years old, with creases all
around his eyes. This man was
just exactly like what you could
see in front of any feed store in
that country — lanky, no hips, hol-
low chested, used up. He had an
old denim work shirt on that was
almost white and soft as muslin

where it hadn’t been patched new,
and he had an old cotton wind-
breaker folded up under his arm.

I coughed and spit it out on
die clay. He looked at it and said:
“What’s that blood all over your
chin?”

“I had my mouth open the first
time they hit me. My teeth cut
me up inside a little.”

“Damn fool thing to do.”

“I was just asking directions.
How was I supposed to know
they’d hit me for being a
stranger?”

“I guess you forgot w'here you
are, kid.”

“I guess I did.” I got up on
my feet and brushed myself off
slowly. “You from around here?”
I was wondering if I’d have to
fight him, too.

“Just passing through,” he said.
"Going north,” he added, “for
now.” He squatted down on the
gravel and parted his stringy
blond hair with his hands. There
was a deep gash in his skull —
the skin was caked with blood
and puffed back from the edges
of the wound a little — and I
could see a duff metal surface
with a brightly scratched sharp
dent in it. “How’s that look, kid?”

“Not so good,” I said. “But it’s
not bleeding, and it doesn’t look
like the plate got broken tlirough.
Just dented to hell. You get that
in the war? What hit you this
time?”

“Gleaver, I think. Little more,

There Ain’t No Other Roads

and he would have got me, who-
ever he was. Had it a week, now
— I guess it’s been as bad as it’s
going to.”

“Looks like the skin’s healing,”
I agreed.

"Yeah. I been looking at it In
rain barrels and ponds, best’s I
could, and feeling it. Looks like
it’s going to heal over. But that
goddam plate’s pushed up against
my brains, or something — it don’t
hurt, but I can’t remember noth-
ing. Came to walking down some
road. Been walking ever since.
Been looking around some, learn-
ing about how it is here and how
the people are, but it’s only been
a week.”

“Jesus,” I said. "What’re you
going to do?”

“Get into a hospital. But I only
got ten bucks. Got to find a job
and make some dough, first.”

“Well,” I said, “you’re not go-
ing to get any job in this state.
Not without being born and
raised in it and everybody know-
ing your Uncle Thad and your
Grandmother Miss Lucy and your
Cousin Hallie, and their kin, and
their kin, going back right to Og-
lethorpe and maybe even farther
— maybe all the way back to New-
gate and Tyburn.”

“You learned that good, huh,
kid?”

“Maybe both of us did. If you’ve
got ten bucks left, whoever hit you
probably did it out of simple ig-
norant cussedness.”

"Could be. It’s as good a idea
as any. Anyhow, I’m headed
north. See if I can pick up a job
there.”

“I’m going the same way. Same
reason. Figure to hit New York
bye and bye, see my folks. May-
be we ought to stick together.”

"Seemed like a good idea to
me.” He straightened up, and
stuck out his hand. “Can’t give
you my name. Don’t know it.
What’s yours?”

“Ernesto Garcia,” I told him,
and we shook hands. We climbed
out of the ditch and walked on
up the road, coming to a sign that
said we were near a town, and
after a while we hit the main
street.

It wasn’t a bad looking little
town, for a place with nothing
but farms all around it. And not
just slum shops in it, either. We
were standing stopped on the side-
walk, and I was looking through
the window of a record store at
the jacket on the Angel L.P. of
Verdi’s Requiem Mass, when the
street cop came over and told us to
move along. My friend and I
turned around and looked at him.

He was a pretty hefty cop. He
was running soft around the mid-
dle, with a little tired bag of flesh
under each eye. But he was big
enough, and a town this size was
just the right size — not too small,
not too big — to have mean cops.
Hardnosed mean.

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

“Ain’t doin’ notliin’,’’ my friend
said.

“No, and you ain’t gonna, ei-
ther. Get out of town. Get out on
the highway. Keep hitchin’.’’

“It’s noontime,’’ my friend said.
"We’re hungry. We was gonna
stop and eat.”

I shuffled my feet a little to
set tliem flat, and loosened up my
shoulders. It seemed to me I could
punch the cop in the throat quick
enough to keep him from blow-
ing his whistle or yelling, and
hard enough to keep him from
dragging out his gun. Long
enough for us to reach a back
alley, or something.

But the cop was frowning and
giving a little ground. “There’s a
diner on the edge of town. You
eat there. Eat quick.”

"Now, look,” my friend said
very quietly, “I been in more din-
ers than you have saloons. I got
grease in my blood from diners.
We’re gonna find us a nice place
to eat, we’re gonna eat. I’m gonna
have a dime cigar and the kid here
is gonna have whatever he wants,
and then we’re gonna move on.
O.K.?”

The cop fiddled with his ear,
and his eyes moved back and
forth. “O.K.,” he mumbled. He
went back to his intersection,
mumbling and cursing to himself.
But when I got a look at my
friend’s face there wasn’t anything
about it, again, that would scare
a man.

“What’s the matter, kid?” m}
friend asked me.

“That cop bothered me.” He
had. One look at him and you
knew he was making a little off
every racket in town. You could
almost see tlie green shine on his
hands that got there by laying off
all kinds of characters doing all
kinds of things, just because they
could afford to pay him. So when
two people hit town from the
road, he had to take it out on us
to balance up his record and make
it up to himself for what he knew
he was.

My friend looked over at the
cop, who twitched his eyes away,
and he shrugged. “Him? Don’t let
him botlier you, kid. His kind
don’t count.”

“He counts. He’s got a club in
his hand and a gun on his hip.”

My friend shook his head.
“No,” he said. “He don’t count for
nothin’.”

We found a lunchroom and
had a couple of small steaks with
hash browns and June peas. My
friend finished his ten cent cigar
after lunch and stubbed it out. I
put down the Camel I had from
the pack he bought me, and we
got up. I suppose I shoidd have
been excited about not having to
sit someplace special, or about be-
ing allowed in the place at all.
But I wasn’t used to having it any
other way, so I didn’t think much
of it. Now, of course, when 1 look

There Ain’t No Other Roads

back . . . But at the time, I
never tliought. I’d never seen any-
thing special about my friend, ei-
ther, even though I knew other
people could.

We went up to the cash regis-
ter desk beside the door, and my
friend paid the check. He got his
change from a pale girl with red
hair.

"You’re new in town, aren’t
you?” she said.

"That’s right. Miss,” he said.
"Just passing through.”

"You look as if you’d been a lot
of places.”

"Might have. Miss. I don’t re-
member.”

"Gee,” she said, ‘Tve never
been anyv/hexe.”

He looked around and out
through die window. “I think the
important things’d be the same,
no matter where you went. All the
same.” He put his change in his
pocket and nodded his head.
" ’Bye, Miss.”

" ’Bye.”

She'd been pretty good with
this habit they have — never let-
ting her eyes really reach me at
aU.

There were hvo highways cross-
ing in the heart of town. We’d
come in on the state, but the fed-
eral was a better bet for rides. We
walked around the corner from
the restaurant and moved along
the street. About four doors down,
there was a little hockshop. There

wasn’t much of anything in the
window, except a scrap of velvet
with a gun lying on it.

The gun was worn blue steel,
with a round barrel, a receiver
without any extractor slide, hood-
ed sights, and a carved mahogany
butt molded to fit the thumb and
fingers. It was the most beautiful
handgun I’ve ever seen. It didn’t
have a cylinder or any space for
a clip in the butt. There was this
card propped up beside it:

This Belongs To The Man
Who Can Use It

The butt was carved to fit a
left hand, and my friend was left-
handed. After a minute we looked
at each other and went into the
shop.

It had a few more hockshop
things in it than there were in the
windows: old, peeling guitars, a
rack of suits, some trunks and suit-
cases. I wondered how much busi-
ness it did.

Nobody came out through the
little door from the back room.
My friend rapped his knuckles on
the glass counter. "Hey?” he said.
Then a man came out. He was
bulky but light on his feet, and
he was old. He had a head full of
bushy white hair, and creases run-
ning around his neck.

"Yes?” he said. "My name is
Mr. Bayer.”

"About that handgun,” my
friend said. I just stood off in a
corner.

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

“Are you interested in buying
it, young man? It’s not for sale.
I’m only holding it.’’

“I gathered that,” my friend
said. “I was curious about the cir-
cumstances.”

He raised an eyebrow. “They’re
scarcely important.”

“See here,” my friend said, “I
was asking a civil question. I’ve
a right to a civil answer.”

“Perhaps you do,” the old man
mused. “Perhaps you do. Let us
see.” He went over to the window
and took the pistol out. He held it
in his right hand for a moment
and then passed it to my friend.
It lit my friend’s hand perfectly
when he closed his fingers over it.

“Yes . . .” the old man mur-
mured, nodding, “perhaps you do.
Point it at the floor and try the
trigger pull.”

My friend tried it, and nothing
happened. His finger slid the trig-
ger back smoothly. There was no
click, no snap from a firing pin,
nothing.

"It’s yours,” the old man said to
him.

“It don’t work.”

“You were able to pull the trig-
ger. It’s yours.”

“What about that card in the
window?”

‘Tou’re the man.”

“Just like diat. We happen to
hit this town, we happen to go by
this shop, I happen to see the
gun, and I’m the man.”

“That’s correct.” The old man

nodded. “As sure as my name is
Bayer.”

“Bushwah, Buddy,” my friend
said. “I ain’t failin’ for no con
game. How many of these you sell
a week?”

The old man said calmly: "You
see here. The weapon is yours. I
receive no price for it because it
is not mine to sell. It’s yours to
hold, now. When you need it —
and that time may come soon or
late, but it will come at least once
in your life — then use it. And
safeguard it. It is not yours to
sell, either.

“When the time comes to use it,
you will know how'. Bemember
just one thing.” He held up his
left hand. It was twisted into an
artliritic lump. “When you cannot
hold the weapon any longer, then
you must be ready for the next
man’s coming.” He crossed over
and yanked down a roller shade
on tlie front door glass. He turned
off tlie shop lights from a switch
at the door, and pushed a key
into the lock. He held the door
open for us. “Good day.”

“Good day, sir,” I mumbled as
w'e went out. My friend stuck the
gun into his waistband, put his
W'indbreaker on over it, and didn’t
say an) thing.

We were walking along the
federal highway with our thumbs
out when the ’38 Plymouth coupe
pulled up. The radiator was boil-
ing, one of the headlights was

There Ain't No Other Roads

broken open and full of sticks
from a bird’s nest, and there was
white cord showing on all four
tires. It had a water pump and
generator squeak, a leaky head
gasket, and at least two dead
plugs. It had an A ration card
sticker on the heat-hubbled wind-
shield, and the body was all dead
paint where it wasn’t rust. The
pale redheaded girl from the res-
taurant was drivmg it.

“Hello.” She’d been chewing
her mouth. There was lipstick all
over her chin. “Ride?”

“Howdy, Miss,” my friend said.
“Thank you.”

The passenger side door had
sprung hinges, and I had to heave
on it to get it open. There was an
Indian blanket thrown over the
front seat. The upholstery was full
of the smell of a river.

“He can ride in the back,” the
girl said to my friend. I crawled
into the little jump seat they have
on those coupes, and my friend
got in front next to the girl, and
pulled the door closed.

She put both hands on the shift
and pulled it into first. The coupe
bucked forward M'hen she came
off the clutch, and she grabbed
for the steering wheel. She kept
one hand on the wheel and one
on the shift, both forearms tense,
and the Plymouth picked up
speed. She used her knee to help
her into second, and hooked her
ankle around the stick to pull it
into third. My friend opened the

glove compartment, found a cello-
phane package of dime cigars
without being surprised, and lit
one.

“I saw you come out of Mr.
Bayer’s shop, didn’t I?” she asked
him. “The gun’s gone from his
window. I don’t suppose you
know about the gun?”

“Uh,” he said.

“Everybody in town’s been puz-
zled about it. Just passmg
through, tire way you were, I don’t
suppose you’d know about that?”
“No, I didn’t. Miss.”

“Now it’s gone and he’s closed
up his shop. Being in there, I
don’t suppose you noticed who he
gave it to?”

“Mm.”

“It was a very funny-looking
gun,” she said, nibbling her lip.
“Nobody could decide what it was
good for.”

“Be tough, all right. You use
this car much. Miss?”

"E — every day.”

“Going back and forth to work.”
“Y— yes.”

“And you always quit work in
this restaurant noontime.”

“Yes — uh . . . yes.”

“This is getting tougher and
tougher for you, isn’t it. Miss?”
She sobbed and broke down.
“I — I can’t help it. Nobody ever
expected I’d be the one who’d
have to pick you up . . . there
are men in town . . . b — but
there wasn’t time . . . oh, this is
all gone wrong!”

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

“There, now,” he said, patting
her shoulder. "Thanks for the ci-
gars, anyhow.”

She rubbed at the freckles
around her eyes and yanked her
skirt down.

My friend took the gun out of
his waistband and fiddled with it
as if he was trying to see what
the gun might be used for. He
stopped when he saw she couldn’t
take her eyes off it. I was glad
of that. She was a bad enough
driver as it was.

"You’re not getting out?” she
said at last.

“Nnn,” he said, leaned back,
and closed his eyes. He put his
elbow on the armrest and his hand
under his ear.

W'e drove along for a while.
She kept looking at him out of
the corner of her eye, and catch-
ing her breath to say something,
and slowing down and speeding
up. When we came to a dirt turn-
off going up a hill to a stone
house, she almost didn’t take it.
But at the last moment she
stopped wavering, dragged the
wheel around, and lurched us up
the slope.

My friend was playing it aw-
fully cool. I hoped he knew a little
bit more about what we were get-
ting into than I did. I knew noth-
ing, and I was worried. He’d been
smart so far, just letting people
talk to him and not giving them
anything back. But that kind of
thing can only carry you so far.

and it can dump you in some hot
places.

The turn-off was a long, wind-
ing thing with a steep grade. The
Plymouth chugged up it with a
burning smell from tlie clutch.
The ride threw us both around a
lot. The gun slipped out of my
friend’s belt. When we finally
stopped in front of the house, my
friend had to lift up die seat cush-
ion and fish it out from where it
had fallen into the battery' well.
The girl stared at it like a bird
watching a snake. My friend
winked at her and spun it around
his index finger by the trigger
guard once before he tucked the
gun out of sight again.

The house was an old ruin
without a roof. The heavy stone
walls stood as though they’d been
there and would be there a long
time, but diere wasn’t a stick of
timber anywhere — no window
frames, no doors, no porch. There
was a heap of stones in front of
the doorway and, though it looked
like happenstance, there was al-
ways a foothold where you would
need it to climb inside. The girl
went first, still biting her lip, and
I followed after my friend. He
turned his head once, gave me a
shrug and a grin, and I felt a little
better.

There were a few walls left
standing inside the house. A beat-
up old wooden handcrank tele-
phone hung from one of them by a
single loose bolt, trailing old-fash-

There Ain’t No Other Roads

ioned thread-wrapped wiring that
disappeared under the rubble that
filled the cellar up to the level of
a living room floor. There was
rain-soaked, mildewed furniture
set up on the rubble; an over-
stuffed chair, a davenport, a cup-
board, and four kitchen chairs.
There was a rusty stove leaning
against one of the stone walls.

There was a man talking on the
telephone, and another one mak-
ing coffee on the stove. There
were two men on the davenport,
and one on each of the kitchen
chairs. There was a big, heavy-
chested man with thick black eye-
brows and no head hair sitting in
the overstuffed chair. His eyes
lighted up W'hen he saw my
friend. He looked my way, and
dismissed me from his mind. It
was my friend that interested him.

“So you fell for it,” he said to
my friend, ignoring the redhead-
ed girl. "You let a hash house
cashier pick you up. ‘Gee, Mis-
ter,' ” he mimicked with a twist of
his pale mouth. “ ‘Gee, it must be
fascinating, seeing all those
places! And I know a very nice
place we could see first . . . it’s
right here on the edge of town
and nobody ever goes there . .
That the way it was, chump?”

"Nnh,” my friend said.

“Sam — Sam!” the redheaded
girl said nervously.

“I’m through with your part.
Cookie,” Sam said. “Shut up and

go help Jerr)' with the coffee. It’s
lunch time.” He didn’t take his
eyes off my friend.

“Sam . . .”

He said to her, with heavy pa-
tience: “Go — help — Jerry.”

She gave him a pale, terrified
look and picked her way over the
rubble to the stove.

“What about tire local?” one of
the men behind me said.

Sam looked at me again. “What
does anybody’ have to do about
one of the locals?”

So they let me be. My friend
squatted down on his heels and
looked at Sam.

Sam said to him: “We’ve been
waiting for you a long time. Know
drat?"

“Why?"

Sam smirked. “Don’t ask fool-
ish questions. Don’t stall around.
If you’d gotten to the gun, you
could have killed us all. But you
didn’t. So now it’s the other way
around. Face it like one of us
should, instead of trying to play
games.”

"Sam!” the redheaded girl cried
from the stove.

"Shut her up, Jerry,” Sam said
without looking over. I heard the
crack of Jerry’s hand. Sam licked
his lips. He said to my friend:

“You know how long we’ve
been in this town. Chump, wait-
ing for you to come for Bayer’s
gun?”

My friend squinted at him.
“You don’t belong here.”

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

That set off a fuse in Sam.
“Who says?" he roared. "The lo-
cals we push around and get to
do anything we want? What have
they got to say about it? Seventy
years apiece and they’re dead.
Make ’em try and think past their
own time and they botch it like
the chimpanzees they are. They
can’t out-live us, out-think us, or
kill us. All they can do is let us
push ’em around, and they’re so
dumb they don’t even know it!
Who," he bellowed, "who says we
don’t belong here! We oivn this
territory. One of these days, we’re
going to own this whole planet;
who do you think’s going to stop
us?"

"That easy, huh?"

"You — ’’ his whole face twisted,
and he finished his sentence as
if he was hawking up the word —
“Cop"

“That what I am?"

"Roving Enforcement Patrol,”
Sam said. "Galactic Justice. It
might take a hundred years, but
you’d come along. We knew that.
Everybody knows it. It drives them
nuts.” He grinned at my friend
with spit on his lips. "But we fig-
ured out your beat. We knew Bay-
er had a bum hand. We knew
somebody’d come along to take the
gun over. So now w^e’ve got you,
without a gun, and when we get
rid of you we’ll have a hundred
years before the next cop comes
along — and we’ll get him, too. As
long as we know where the gun is.

Even unarmed, you’re still too fast
for just a few men. But once we
get one of you in a corner like
this, you’re dead. And you know
it. Sweat, cop — I like to see a cop
sweat.”

My friend looked around at the
stone walls and the men between
us and any way out. "The gun’s in
town, huh?" he said. "Why didn’t
you just take it?" \

“A little hazy in the head, are
you? If anybody but a cop pulls a
cop’s gun, it kills him.”

Another car came twisting up
the drive. I could hear it, but I
wasn’t going to take my eyes off
Sam.

Sam looked at the man who’d
been on the phone. “Is that Char-
lie?"

“Yeah. He said he’d be right
over.”

Sam said to my friend: "Char-
lie’s in charge of the town back
up the road. We figure he’s en-
titled to see a cop die.”

I heard him come up tlie pile
of rocks outside the doorway, and
then he stepped in. He was a
weedy man with lank hair and
thick lips, and he was wearing
overalls. When he saw my friend
his mouth opened out into an O,
and his eyes went wide. "I’ll be
damned!” he said. "That’s a fel-
low I had working on my farm.
Just regular help — you know.
Front. Had a piece of timber fall
on him, buildin’ a barn, and got
knocked out. I sent him off to the

There Ain’t No Other Roads

hospital, and he disappeared from
it. I’ll be damned.”

“No kidding,” Sam said, in-
trigued. “What name’d he give
you?”

“Bayer.”

And the girl yelled: “Sam, he’s
got the gun!”

And every man in that place
pulled out a cleaver or a hatchet
and started for my friend.

It would have worked fine, ex-
cept that my friend went for the
men along the walls first. He was
up on his feet before Charlie ever
really started to say ‘Bayer.’ By
the time Charlie had the second
syllable out, my friend had the
hatchets and cleavers lying in a
pile between Sam and himself.
When the girl yelled about the
gun, the gun was already in the
air, where he’d tossed it. My friend
was fast, all right. Sam looked
down, and the gun was lying in
his lap.

The men along the walls looked
at their bleeding hands. Sam kept
looking at the gun. Charlie began
to mumble prayers. And the girl
and that fellow Jerry just stood
there with hot coffee on their
clothes.

“See, kid,” my friend turned to
me, “I was supposed to try and
shoot them. And while I was pull-
ing the trigger like some damned
moron, they were going to close in
all together and swing at me all at
once. Figurin’ they’d get some

good licks in before I let up on
the gun, it being nothing but a
fake.”

He looked at Sam. “Might of
worked. They might of got an arm
or a leg off me — slowed me down
enough to chop my head loose.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Might of
worked. The rest of it was pretty
good, too. And . . , the young
lady’s a fine actress.”

“She won the Five Suns award
Uvo years ago,” Sam said in a slow
voice. He tossed the gun on the
pile of cleavers. “I choose my en-
tire group very carefully. And you
say my plan was good.”

“It wasn’t bad thinking, Sam,”
my friend said. “But you spent
too much time tellin’ me what I
was. You filled me in on my being
a cop; you told me all about the
gun. What for? I was supposed to
know all that, wasn’t I?”

“How could you? With am-
nesia?”

“Yeah,” my friend said. “But
tire story was you didn’t know
that, remember?” My friend
sighed. “You must have spent a
long time figuring out how to kill
a cop. How to slow him down.
How to make him stop and think
while he was supirosed to act, and
how to make him do the wrong
thing when he did move. You
must have spent a long time fig-
uring out what I’d react to, with
no memories about myself — where
I came from, where I was going.
But you didn’t spend all that time

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

here. Where’re you all from —
tliat town up the road?”

‘‘We almost got you there.”

My friend fingered his head.
“Yeah. You must have. But I’m
fast.”

“You got away. But we still al-
most got you. And we almost got
you here.”

“Almost,” my friend said gent-
ly. “Yes. It wasn’t a had try — I’ve
said that. It was good thinking,
Sam — especially the Bayer part.”
1 le looked at Sam with real friend-
ship. "You thought about it,” he
said softly. “You understood. You
fed me the Bayer thing so I’d sud-
denly diink maybe I did have a
father, and that was supposed to
stop me for a minute. But it was
all too pat. And because you used
it, now I know for sure I ne\'er
had anyone.” For a minute, my
friend’s face had a lost look on it.

Then he w'ent out to Charlie’s
car and brought in Mr. Bayer,
Mr. Bayer’s left hand looked fine,
now. One of Sam’s boys had had
time to take one step toward the
cleavers. He stepped back.

“What’re you going to do now?”
Sam asked.

My friend looked around at all
of them. “Kill you,” he said, and I
saw the look on his face.
It touched all of them, and one
by one they crumpled up, with
their hands over their eyes.

When it ivas over, Sam and the
rest of them got slowly back up to

their feet. They were trembling.
Sam said: “Thank you,” mbbing
his head and shaking it. “I can’t
imagine what got into us.”

'Tlie redheaded girl nodded.
“You — you just seem to drift into
these things. You start by thinking
how helpless these people are,
and how easy it would be to . . .
plav . . . with them. Then you
decide it couldn’t possibly do any
harm to just slip down here for a
visit . , . just to see. Then you
try it, once — you get one of them
to do some litde thing for you
. . . something harmless . . .
and then — then — ” She began to
cry. “But how could I he like
that?”

"I don’t know. Miss,” my friend
said. “Go on home, now. Go home.
There must be families — some-
body — to care for you and miss
you.”

“We will,” Mr. Bayer said.
“There are.”

"Have you got a way of getting
back to wherever w’e all come
from?” my friend asked Sam.

Sam nodded. He looked curi-
ously at my friend. 'Tou still don’t
remember, do you? You don’t
know about sidereal travel or die
Galactic Council or any of it.”

My friend shook his head. “No.
But it doesn’t matter. Look what
happened here. I go on doing my
job, anyhow. I don’t have to know
how it’s done. It’s in my blood.”
“I’ll tell them you’re hurt.”

My friend smiled a little.

There Ain't No Ot}ter Roads

"They’ll just note it down. I’m
alive — that’s all they need for me
to be.” He walked over to the
doorway. “Come on, Kid,” he said.

He stopped and raised his hand
to the others. "Well, goodbye —
good luck.”

"Thank you again, officer.
Goodbye.”

We walked on down to the
highway and started along it.

“Look,” I said after a while, "I
won’t tell anybody about it. You
know that. But if you’d rather I
didn’t tag along with you after
we hit the next crossroads. I’ll
just go off in some other direc-
tion.”

He shook his head, and he was
back to being die way he had
been — nothing special, tired,
leathery, just moving along. “It
don’t make no difference, kid.
You do what you want. Tell any-
body anything you want. It don’t
matter what anybody docs. There
ain’t no other roads. Some things
always get worked out no matter

how you tiy and get around ’em
or stop ’em.”

He put his hand on my shoul-
der. "Maybe I’ll be turnin’ off at
the next town. I’ll follow my feet.
They’ll know where’s the next
place for me to be. Just you re-
member this: anywhere you go.
I’m w'ith you or somebody like me’s
with you. There is justice in this
world, and justice everywhere
else.” His voice got softer. "Only
— Sam was the only one. The
only one who thought of what it
must feel like to be me. Even with
this hole in my head. I’ve got a
brain. A good brain. I think about
these things, and put ’em together,
and I know what I am. I know all
I’ve got is this going from town
to town, down one road after an-
other. Not coming from anywhere,
not going anywhere. No people,
no family, no historJ^

“I like Sam. Except maybe him,
nobody realizes. Not you. Not that
girl. Not even the smart, good
people who watch over you and
built me.”

ON HAND; A Book

by THEODORE STURGEON

A DEFIANCE OF TIME. Aiithology. Edited and with a
preface by Theodore Sturgeon. Published by (unde-
termined), Spring 1959. Price (unassigned). Bibli-
ography.

The story is told of a new
pastor appointed to a village "liv-
ing” whose church w'as filled, on
his first Sunday, not only by the
dutiful but by the curious, who
wanted a good look at the young
shepherd. And indeed their at-
tendance was worthwhile, for
the newcomer delivered a veri-
table whing-ding of a sermon on
sin, wickedness, backsliding and
moral frailty, together with a
clear program for the acquisition
of virtue and the defeat of Satan.
The congregation was well
pleased, and the church on the
following Sunday was filled. On
die second Sunday most of the
people were as favorably im-
pressed, but for a handful who
had, instead of merely admiring
die preacher, actually listened to
his words. It seemed to this frac-
tion that the second sermon was
not only markedly similar to the
first — it W'as identical. By sermon
time on the next Sunday the

whole village was alerted, and be-
came witnesses to the fact that
their new preacher was indeed,
and for the third Sunday, repeat-
ing himself. They let him finish,
but at the end a grizzled deacon
leaped to his feet and demanded:
"When you going to get a new
sermon. Reverend?”

Replied die pastor, ringingly,
"When you sinners start living as
if you’d heard the old one I”

It is in this vein that I repeat
Sturgeon’s Revelation, which w'as
wrung out of me after twenty
years of wearying defense of sci-
ence fiction against the attacks of
people w'ho used the worst ex-
amples of the field for ammuni-
tion, and whose conclusion was
that ninety percent of s f is crud.
The Revelation :

Ninety percent of everything
is crud.

Corollary 1 : The existence of
immense quantities of trash in
science fiction is admitted and

On Hand: A Booh

it is regrettable; but it is no more
unnatural than the existence of
trash anywhere.

Corollary 2; The best science
fiction is as good as the best fic-
tion in any field.

These statements, especially
the second corollary', would seem
to be self-evident, especially to
readers of Venture. It is power-
fully clear, however, drat they,
and it, are not evident to die lay
reader and his key symbol, the
lay critic. One may conclude that
this is the result merely of ig-
norance; not only is the main-
stream critic not exposed to much
s f, but he is understandably af-
fected by die popular conviction
that s f is cheap stuff, funny-
paper stuff, stuff for kids with
plasdc fishbowls over their heads
and dysfunctional zap-guns in
their hands.

I’herc are times, however,
when darker motives than ig-
norance seem to be at work. I
went into this on these pages
recently, by hypothesizing diat s f
was resented for its crud-content
where other fields were permitted
theirs, and were amenable to dis-
criminative criticism (i.e. good
W'esterns and bad: “literary" de-
tective stories and Private Ugh
types). I said diat we are, as a
culture, worshipping science, and
die existence of undoubted, de-
monstrable crud in something
labelled “Science” not only of-
fended the devout: it frightened

them. Science fiction could there-
fore expect unreasoning, unrea-
sonable, subconsciously motivated
attacks.

This may well have been the
cause, or part of the cause, or
one of the causes, of the job done
by Time magazine recently on
Judith Merril’s sf, the year’s
GREATEST SCIENCE FICTION
AND FANTASY, SECOND EDITION.
For a fine description of this in-
excusable keel-hauling, I turn to
Bob Leman, perceptive editor of
The American Journal of Ocu-
lenteratology* , who writes:

"Time is at it again. It would
appear diat Mr. Luce’s book editor
lx:riodically casts his eye over the
garden of American literature,
and if he finds that the noxious
weed scienee fiction is showing
signs of health, he dispatches a
minion with a dull hoe to chop
it down. . . .

"Time’s reviewer tears into
[tlie Mcrril book] with ferocious
relish, utterly damning four of
the five stories he reviews (out
of eighteen in the book) and
faindy praising the fifth (Korn-
bluth’s ‘The Cosmic Expense Ac-
count’) because it is ‘an amazing
satire on S. — F.’ But it is Miss
Merril herself who comes in for
the hardest lumps. The reviewer
quotes a sentence from her com-
mentary, and then proceeds to
dispose of her, her book, and, by

*Publithed at 2701 So. Vine St., Den-
ver 10, Colorado.

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

implication, SF, as follows: ‘No
horror in the anthology is so
appalling as the fact that at this
very moment there is a mind-
matrix around that is capable of
writing such sentences in the
belief that they mean something.’

"Now in fairness it must be
admitted that the sentence to
which he takes exception is in-
deed impenetrable jargon. But it
is only one sentence out of an
essay which is on the whole
sensible and instructive, and to
use it as characteristic of Miss
Merril and her book is hitting
below the belt. This review goes
beyond the point of being un-
fair; it is a deliberate attempt to
destroy. . . . One is forced to
conclude that this is what Tune
wants.”

It is not my desire to bring
mainstream readers away from
their chosen channels to flounder
in any estuary called Sub-species:
Science Fiction. I would far rather
bring to universal attention the
fact that s f is what any f is —
an expression, by the creative
mind, of human values and
human experience. As Arthur C.
Clarke pointed out in his 1956
World Science Fiction Conven-
tion speech, modern science fic-
tion began, and was subject to
criticism, as fiction, period. The
novels of Jules Verne and H. G.
Wells were submitted to the
world as — novels. Nobody sub-
divided, nobody categorized, and

most especially, nobody reviewed
them on Page 42 of the book
seetion under the general head-
ing of Spaceman’s Realm. I sub-
mit that whatever the fate and
fortunes of s f since those days,
it deserves today to be read by
pubhc and critic alike with all
other contemporary creations, to
stand or fall on its own merits.

I submit further that until this
happens, a vital injustice is being I
done writers and readers alike.
The general public was, for ex-
ample, to a great degree un-
informed of tlie existence of the
superb (by any standards) s f
novel A MIRROR FOR OBSERVERS,
by Edgar Pangborn, because it
was invisibly reviewed baek there
in Zap-gun Corner. Nevil Shute’s
mediocre s f novel on the
BEACH got an exceedingly large
showing because the general
public was not told it was s f.
Vercors’ you shall know
THEM, Philip Wylie’s the dis-
appearance, even 1984 would
have been seen only by you and
me and a handful of others, had
they carried the bylines, say, of
A. J. Budrys, Walter M. Miller,

Jr. or William Tenn. I submit
finally that if some emergent
literary giant should write what
was truly the fabled Great
American Novel, serialized it in
Galaxy, saw hard-eover publica-
tion with Gnome Press and
second-printing distribution with
the Doubleday Science Fiction

On Hand: A Book

Book Club, virtually no one
would ever hear of it. Especially
not from the Books section of
Time magazine.

All right, let’s do something
about this. Let us make a book,
you and I, to refute for all time,
and for all of Time, the great
permeating assumption that this
field cannot produce work of last-
ing artistic and literary merit. Let
us aim at a round dozen stories
which have originated in what is
generally known as the science
fiction field. Well eliminate “our”
fantasy; we can get to that later.

Now, it may w'ell be that
twelve truly immortal science fic-
tion stories do not exist. In any
case they’ll be very, very hard to
locate, only because twelve truly
immortal stories of any variety
would be hard to locate. Well,
if we turn up only three, we’ll
publish those in a slim artistic
volume. The criteria are strength,
style, cadence, form, idea. We
must include some previously
anthologized material, because
that’s where some of the truly
great ones are living. But some
must be taken out of current
sources, if only to prove that s f
is one of the wellsprings of great
modern writing. And I hope, I
devoutly hope, that there will be
some original stories. This hope

is a wan one, because the author
is going to have to wait for ac-
ceptance until Nov. 1, 1958, the
immutable deadline: no selec-

tions will be made until all
nominations are in.

The final decision on each story
will be mine alone, arbitrary and
undemocratic. This is because
somebody has to be willing to
spend time in the hospital after
having turned down your favorite
story, or his . . . the damn fool
doesn’t know the difference be-
tween great writing and what the
New Yorker calls rich, beautiful
prose.

I appeal for nominations to
writers, editors, agents and pub-
lishers W’ho are familiar with the
field; to serious critics such as
Mr. Vincent Stirrett and Mr.
Basil Davenport who have some
understanding of s f; but most
of all to you, the reader, who in
tlie aggregate has read more s f,
and w'ho knows it far better than
I ever could.

As for the title, be it under-
stood that “Time” in tlie title is
a mere acknowledgement and
only part of a pun. The structure
of contemporary literary criticism
is upheld by a multiplicity of
arches, of which Time is only
one. It is the total groin at which
I am aiming this kick.

Tve crowded Offhand from this issue. Sorry. Til restore the balance next
time . . . Erratum in last Offhand; earthman’s burden, by Void
Anderson & Gordon Dickson, was 'published by Gnome Press — not by
Doubleday. Maxima culpa.

INTRUDER

by DON BERRY

Each Skip in the new ship lasted one microsecond—
and covered 1400 light years. Everything seemed
perfect— except for that uneasy feeling that
during the Skips something went on that wasn't right . , .

Fury.

Rage.

Fire . . .

Streaming from his moutli,
long gouts of orange flame,
creeping up his face, burning,
searing . . .

He felt it somewhere behind
his eyes, it caressed his brain,
began to seep burningly through
the sockets of his eyes, consum-
ing, eating, devouring . . .

Red, red, red. Exciting red,
malicious red, the red of blood
and lire and anger, burning red,
quenching red, thirsting red . . .

His father came to stand be-
side him, standing tall, very tall
beside the bunk He was too tall
by far, his father. Too tall.

His father took olt his tall silk
opera hat and held it formally
against his stomach. It made a
little dent in die flesh, because
his father wore no clothes at all
at all, but he was tall was tall

and he was stretching far too tall
and sometimes the head of him
was not there, but outside the
ship where the fire came from.

It just went up through the
hull. His head. He was very tall.

Lying in the bunk with the
flames pouring from his ears and
eyes and nose, a mouth full of
fire, he said to his father:

"Hello, Dad.”

His father nodded sagely, wise
in his infinite talldom and his
dark deep eyes watched the
burning red of his son’s face
against die black of space and
the white of fear . . .

"Dad?”

Suddenly his father grasped
the tall silk hat tightly, his face
grew very excited, his eyes (tall
eyes, even, dark deep) were
widened, and he clutched his son
by the shoulder. He spoke, but
there was no fire in his mouth
that his son could be sure of.

"Name and occupation,
please?” said his father with

Intruder

great excitement. "Name and oc-
cupation? Name and occupa-
tion?”

"You know me, Dad. You re-
member me.”

Then he swallowed a ball of
flame and it began to trickle
burningly down his throat. In
his stomach it surged, and ate
out his heart and spit out the
seeds. Just as it was starting on
his liver, he screamed as loud
as he could but it didn’t do any
good at all because it came out
a very quiet whisper. It would
have been a water scream, to put
out the endless flame if he could
have brought it off, but he
couldn’t and it wasn’t, it was
just a quiet whisper to his father.

"Aw, come on now. Dad. You
remember me. Don’t you?”

His father looked very sad at
this, and he put die opera hat
back on, with dignity, with tall-
ness.

"You’re a bad boy,” he said.
"You’re a pretty bad boy.”

'Tou remember me,” said his
son. "Don’t you?”

"You’re a bad boy. I wish
you’d go away from here,” said
his father. "I’ll have to hurt you
if you don’t go away.”

He wanted to go. He did want
to very badly, but the flames
wouldn’t let him. His body was
completely gone, now, burned
away in happy redness and there
was just a tiny patch of dull gray
left somewhere up in his head.

7 I

The flame crept up toward it,
burning. Redly. Happily . . .

In the belly of the ship a relay
cheked.

His name was David Saar, and
he got out of the bunk carefully,
uncertainly. He was a tall man,
dark hair, long nose, deep-set
eyes, a thin face.

He smiled ruefully at his own
caution and walked to the control
console, flicking his quick glance
over the instruments lined there
like saucers on a table.

Satisfied, he pressed a button
on the console and a cylinder
slid smoothly from the ceiling in
the center of the control room.
He moved to it. He adjusted the
vernier scales, made a reading,
did it again. He noted down the
results carefully. In an hour he
had made tire readings he needed,
and he went to the tapewriter
and punched it into binary form
and fed it into tire decorous slit
that was Input on the calculator.

The calculator talked to itself.
It hummed quietly, clicked and
chattered inoffensively and soon
coughed out trvo small white
cards, one marked Temporal, one
marked Spatial.

David Saar looked at them,
grunted happily, and sat down
before the console again.

He pressed another switch and
said, "Saar to Central, second
contact. Saar to Central, second
contact.”

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

He repeated this several times,
until the console said to him,
“Central to Saar, second contact.
Dave?”

“Hello, Johnny,” David Saar
said. “Got the time?”

“Sure thing,” said the console.
“Just a second.” A high pitched
regular beeping came from the
speaker. David plugged a jack
into the oscilloscope, and the
beeping was transformed into a
regular curve with high, sharp
peaks. He plugged in another
jack, this one from the cesium
clock aboard ship, and another
wave of the same shape appeared
on the screen, but they did not
coincide.

“Another retard, Johnny,” he
said. “Just a second. I’ll find out
how much.”

He calculated quickly, figuring
from the indices on the oscillo-
scope face.

“Total of six point nine two
microseconds,” he said. “Less
three point six from the first skip
gives three point three two for
this one.”

“O.K,” said the speaker. "Won-
der why it’s less this time?”

“Don’t know.” David shrugged
silently, it wasn’t his business to
know. He collected the data,
somebody else could figure it out.

“Subjectively I’m six point nine
two microseconds behind you,”
he said. “See what a soft berth
I got? By Earth time my life has
been extended almost seven mi-

croseconds. Hell, I’m practically
immortal, compared to you short-
lived bastards.”

The radioman at Earth Cen-
tral laughed. “Give me the rest
of what you have,” he said.

“I’ll feed it in automatic,”
David said. “It’s a long tape.”
“Fine,” said Johnny. “But give
me a verbal rundown, too, will
you?”

“Sure. This Skip was the same
as last, one microsecond duration.
According to , the computer, I
belled out just a few hundred
light years from Arcturus.”

The speaker whistled. “You,
my friend, are burning up space.”
“For a fact,” said David com-
placently. “Fourteen hundred
light years in one microsecond.
Figure it out in miles per hour.”
“Like hell,” said Johnny.
“How’s your course prediction?”
“It seems to work pretty well,”
David told him. “I can’t tell for
sure. The brain ti'ust had the
Skiptapes already punched, so I
only know roughly where I’m
supposed to get each time. Seems
to be working out all right
though.”

The speaker was silent for a
moment. “I guess we’ve done it,
Dave. I guess we’ve got the stars
right in our grubby little paws.”
“Looks like it.”

“How’s it feel? I mean, how’s
it feel to be the first, Dave? The
first man ever to travel faster than
light.”

Intruder

“Too big for me," David said.
“Way too big, I can’t comprehend
it, really. I have to figure it’s just
another job to get done, and do
it.”

"What does the Skip itself feel
like?"

"Nothing in particular.”

The voice sounded dis-
appointed. "Oh. Well — hell,
jou’d think there’d be some kind
of feeling. Moving outside of
normal space and time, you’d
think you’d feel different. You’re
in a world we’ve never seen,
Dave, a universe we can only
know as a theory.”

"It’s just the inside of the ship
to me, Johnny. I never see any-
tliing.”

“No sensation,” mused the
%'Oice.

"In a microsecond? I just strap
myself in the bunk when a Skip
comes due. Then I bell out into
normal space and get up. That’s
it. Pretty dull.”

“No dreams, even?” The voice
of Johnny was reluctant to let
go of his idea.

"No dreams,” said David
firmly. “None at all.”

“Too bad.”

“Nothing at all,” David re-
located, feeling uneasy. “Noth-
ing. . . .”

Fire and redness, the con-
sumed body, the roaring furnace

of fear and fear and fire and fire
and fire.

Fear and fire and redness hap-
pily red, glowing, eating con-
suming hating angering lust-
ing .. .

The thirst, unquenchable
. . . the hunger, insatiable
. . . the life, unlivable . . .

Nothing, not-thisness, not-
hereness, tl>e great all-redness of
flaming and fire and the incal-
culable tallness of his father’s
eyes.

The fire consunfing, racing and
darting in his belly, pain pain
burning and pain . . . the or-
gans charred, ashed, burnt out
and dead without numbness, the
death-while-living and pain and
pain and fire and the searing
sight of needled eyes . . .

“Name and occupation? Name
and occupation?”

“You remember me. Dad.”

“I don’t know you.”

"Aw, Dad . . .’’

“No!” screamed his father, in
a rage, twisted face.

David turned his burnt out
eyes away.

“No! No!” screamed the old
man, growing taller and taller.
“No no no no no . . His
voice trailed off to a high buzz-
saw whine.

"Dad, I’ve lost your fre-
quency,” David reminded him,
but the old man didn’t care any
more. He said he didn’t care any
more, but David knew he was

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

lying all the time. He cared, all
right. But he was red-hot angry.

Red anger flowing and sweep-
ing, a flaming stream, leaping
flames, anger, a river of blazing
shrieking anger . . .

Stream, cool water, not-hot
flame, but no . . .

Streams of flame and hate and
screaming, rivers of it pools of it
lakes of it, the molten golden-red
ocean of anguish . . .

"Say Dad, I’ve been meaning
to ask you — ’’

His father’s teeth were
clenched, but he was wise be-
yond all knowing of wise. He
pointed his long, knob-boned fin-
ger and it went into his son’s
head, burning with a white sear-
ing heat.

“You’re a fairly bad boyl” he
shrieked.

“Don’t shout,” said David.

“Be reasonable. Dad,” he said.

“You shouldn’t shout when you
say ‘fairly bad,’ Dad. It doesn’t
make any sense when you do it
like that.”

His father twisted his finger
in David’s head, and it grated,
screaming pain down his back,
and his father laughed to hear
him scream.

“I don’t want you to do it
again,” his father said.

“All right Dad, all right ”

“Never again! Never!”

“Dad, didn’t I promise?”

“Never never never not not
ever no no no no!”

All negation came to David.
The not-knowledge of no-mes-
sage, non-existing in his un-mind
without reality, not-coming from
nowhere, his un-fadier told him
not.

His father left him, growing
tall he left him, but the white-hot
finger remained, twisting, the
pain, the pain . . .

The relay swung shut with a
clack! and the ship belled into
normal space.

“You’re absolutely sure?” asked
Johnny.

The automatic tape hummed
busily, tapping out its data.

“Positive!” said David, a little
angrily. “Why do you keep harp-
ing on it, Johnny?”

“It just seems like you should
feel clifEerent,” Johnny said.
“Everybody else — ” he broke off.

“Everybody else? What do you
mean ‘everybody else?’ ”

“Everybody else thinks so, too,”
Johnny said.

“That’s not what you started
to say.”

“How do you know?”

“It isn’t, is it?”

“Dave, you’re jumpy,” Johnny’s
voice said from far away.

“Maybe so.”

“Maybe you should forget
about the other Skips.”

“What do you mean?”

“Program your return tape.
Right now.”

“Don’t be silly,” said David.

Intruder

‘Tm halfway around the galaxy.”
“You could get back in a hurry.
Make a return in one Skip.”

“We don’t know what a pro-
longed Skip will do to the ship.
A microsecond, yes — longer, no.”
“We’re doing it right now,”
Johnny pointed out. “The com-
munication beams are running
through Otherspace continuously.”
“Sure,” David agreed. “Pro-
jecting a modular form through
Otherspace is one thing. A hunk
of matter like this ship is another.
We haven’t any idea what the
presence of mass like this is do-
ing to the balance of the Other-
space system. For all we know
I might be tearing holes in it.”
"Tearing holes in what?
There’s nothing there. You
haven’t run into any mass-bodies
at all, have you?”

“No. But I’m only in Other-
space for a microsecond.”

“Fourteen hundred light years
wortli.”

“How do we know what dis-
tance that’s equivalent to on the
other side? We can’t try to carry
over our physical constants where
they don’t apply.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said
Johnny dubiously.

“Look,” said David. “Legiti-
mately, we can’t even call Other-
space ‘space.’ Space isn’t a thing,
it’s a logical relation. At least
that’s what the big boys drummed
into me before I left. If there
isn’t any mass, there isn’t any

‘space,’ because space is a rela-
tion that pertains to mass. See?”
Johnny laughed. “Hell no! I’m
just a dumb radio operator con-
verted for new operations. All
that jazz is gobbledy-gook to me.”
“Well,” David admitted, “I’m
not sure I understand it. I just
know the right words for it in the
riglit combination. Maybe that’s
what understanding is. Nobody
really knows what goes on in
Otherspace, if anything. We just
know we can plug a ship into it
for a microsecond and come out
fourteen hundred light years
away from where we started. I
guess that’s all we have to know.”
“Yeah,” said Johnny. “And you
don’t feel any different at all.”
“No!” snapped David.
“Disappointing,” said Johnny
shortly. “Even in the Skip?”

“Nothing,” said David. “How
many times do I have to tell you?
Nothing!”

Ill

PsychCaptain John Meckler,
sometime ‘dumb radio operator,’
flicked the Transmit switch to
‘Off.’

He leaned back in his chair
and a bead of perspiration ran
from his forehead down the nar-
row bridge of his nose. Absently
he pulled out a handkerchief and
wiped it away, realizing tliat the
whole of his nearly-bald head was
wet, and his glasses w’ere fogged.

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

He took off his glasses and tlie
room around him became hazy.
Methodically he polished the
lenses dry on the handkerchief.
He put them back on and objects
sprang back into focus. He
sensed the tension of the tight
circle of men around the Otlier-
space Transmitter.

“Well?” said someone.

Meckler sighed, pushed his
chair away from the transmitter
and stood up. He looked around
the huge, silent room of Central
Control, at the many faces
turned to him. Close to him, the
faces of the high brass were like
the breakers of an ocean of peo-
ple. Suddenly he was very tired
of swimming in that ocean, he
felt he would go under, he hadn’t
the strength to swim any more.

“As far as I can tell, lie’s sane,”
he said.

A heavy man in a neat uni-
form with a star-and-comet on
the lapel spoke up.

“What does ‘sane’ mean?”

“In this particular context, it
means that — oh, hell, a lot of
things. He is capable of decision.
He is able to make orderly ar-
rangement and use of a group of
ideas. He knows where he is, he
has a very good sense of per-
sonal identity . . .”

“Another good hypothesis hits
the dust,” muttered another man.

“I’m afraid so,” Meckler said.
He fumbled at his jacket pocket.
“Has anybody got a cigarette?”

His hands shook badly getting
a light.

"That was our first tliought,”
he said, blowing a long plume at
the ceiling. “Loss of personal
identity. It seemed reasonable.”

“Meaning?”

“The immensity of the whole
tiling,” Meckler said. “What
David Saar is doing, and what
Canaletti and Morgan did before
him, is just too big. It’s too much
for a human mind to compre-
hend, there’s no adequate frame
of reference.

“When the Ch’ao-Yang equa-
tions — ” he nodded almost im-
perceptibly at the two young
Chinese mathematicians who
stood listening, " — first implied
the existence of Otlierspace, we
could handle it. Because it was
a theoretical construct, a thing of
symbols on paper. The symbols
could be manipulated in such
and such a way, with such and
such results. 'They were toys, if
the gentlemen will forgive me.”

Ch’ao and Yang both smiled.

"But,” Meckler continued,
“diere is a very great difference
between handling the symbols for
Otherspace, and actually existing
tliere. Canaletti and Morgan, the
first two we sent out — couldn’t
make it. 'They went out men,
and came back something less.
They came back having lost the
single tiling most important to a
human being: the conviction that
he exists. With that conviction

Intruder

gone altogether — for what rea-
sons we can’t even guess — they
died. They were dead when drey
got here, even though their bodies
did function a few hours longer.”

“What does this mean with
regard to David Saar?”

“David Saar is an egoist, and
a man with such a consuming
drive to do the job he set out to
do that we hope he cannot be
attacked in this way. His con-
viction of personal existence and
identity is still strong, which
might indicate his egoism is carry-
ing him through — or just that he
is not being exposed to the same
influences.”

The mathematician Yang
mused in a low voice, “What
could possibly be strong enough
to convince a man he did not
exist?”

Meckler shrugged, “I don’t
know,” he said. “It would have
to be something so overwhelm-
ing ... I don’t know, Yang. I
just don’t know. The conviction
of existence is so basic to life, it’s
impossible to guess what might
upset it.”

“Perhaps — ” the heavy, uni-
formed man started.

“No, now wait a minute,”
Meckler interrupted. “There are
ten thousand things to perhaps
about, and we simply can’t con-
sider them all. We can’t operate
on the basis of perhapses.”

“The ten thousand things are
one,” said Ch’ao in a low voice.

“What?”

“Nothing,” said the matlremati-
cian. “An old Taoist saying.”

“What can we operate on,
Meckler?”

“The only actual data we have
is this,” Meckler said. He ges-
tured to a drum of paper on
which a stylus was drawing a
jagged line.

“The encephalograph.”

“Yes. We have every testing
device we know of focussed on
David Saar’s body every minute;
they analyze his physical and
mental condition as completely
as would be possible if he were
in this room.”

"What do they show?”

“Look here,” said Meckler. He
unrolled several long strips of
graphed paper with lines of dif-
ferent colors etched on them.

“I don’t know what those
things mean,” said a man.

“You don’t have to,” Meckler
said. “See here? This is the point
of entry into Otherspace.”

“All the lines go dead flat.”
“That’s right. The instruments
are not recording. They would
show more if they were tuned on
a metal plate — temperature, tex-
ture and so forth, at the least.”
“Maybe the transmission does-
n’t reach us through Otherspace.”
“It does. The metering trans-
mission is hooked into the same
circuit as the communications
beam, which works perfectly.”

“So? What does it mean?”

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

"One of two things. During the
microsecond the ship Skips into
Otherspace, either the instru-
ments or David Saar cease to
e.\ist.”

"Which?”

"Since diere is still a carrier
impulse being fed from the test-
ing devices into tlic metering

transmission system, we have to
assume that the mechanisms con-
tinue to record. And they record
complete negation.”

"David Saar dies every time he
Skips?”

"No, not dies,” said Mecklcr.

"Ceases to e.xist, in any form

detectable to our instruments.”

lie belled out after the fourth
Skip with a headache.

A headache and a sensation
tliat he had something to remem-
ber, something he should remem-
ber.

He shook the feeling as well
as he could, tabulating data. He
whistled softly when he saw the
tapes orienting him in the neigh-
borhood of NGC 3098, a type 0
star.

It was almost 3000 light years
from his previous point. The Skips
were lengthening, for some reason.
He talked it over with Johnny
while the automatic transmission
was doing its job.

There was something funny
about Johnny, it seemed to hun.

Fury!

Rage!

Run! Run, David, run!

"Run,” said his father quietly.
"Run. Run.”

The corridor was full of fire,
all was fire and red and flat hot
heat. Breatliing fire, the searing
of lungs, the melting off of flesh
and knowledge, the prickling
burning slashing somber heat.

His father behind him, the tall
eyes, watching . . . "Run again.
Run more . . .”

He ran, turning. He ran, tivist-
ing. He ran with the jagged
agonies of smoking lungs, white-
sharp red-edged spears of pain
of pain of pain —

"Name and occupation? Name
and occupation? Place of resi-
dence?”

Query.

Asking.

Dad wanting to know, ques-
tioning with white fire.

"Dad, you know me.”

"Name and occupation?” Re-
lentless. "Place of residence?” Im-
placable.

"Pm trying to tell you. Dad,
but you won’t understand!”

And then: the flick of a fin-
gered hand all buried red deep
in his skull, his father’s bony,
builder’s hand, knuckled with
agony, tipped with flame, ten-
doned with terror.

Grasping. Squeezing . . .

Intruder

“Dad. Please. Don’t.”

"You promised,” Dad said
decently.

“Sure, Dad, didn’t I promise?”
“You promised not to come
back.”

“Sure, Dad. I won’t. I promise.
I promise I promise I — ”

“So did the others,” Dad said
kindly. “So did they, so did they.”
“Dad,” he reminded, “I don’t
know you, I don’t understand
you.”

He couldn’t breathe, there
wasn’t enough fire to breathe.

“Dad,” he pleaded, “I forgot.
I promise, but that time I forgot.”
“Run again.”

‘Tm tired. I can’t. I can’t — ”
“RUN AGAIN.”

And he running, and all the
time Dad coming closer, trying to
be with him, trying to come into
his body and mind and soul with
fire . . .

“Dad!” David shrieks. He
screams. “Dad, there’s no room
in me! You can’t come in! There’s
no room no room no room . . .”
“That’s what I’m telling you,”
said Dad. “No room and you
can’t come back again.” He lifted
the bony builder’s hand . . .

The hand wrote on his brain
in white and sharp edged letters:
DONT FORGET.

“No, Dad,” he mumbled.
‘Tou know me.” Flame buried
deep in his belly and seethed
and burned and burned and
burned. . . .

John Mcckler slept. He slept
with his head forward on his
arms, pillowed, and the room
was empty except for the quiet
Chinese who sat beside him.

The sky outside was black, but
clear. Stars massed in it, like
foam on the ocean. Ch’ao
watched the stars massing, lumi-
nous thunderclouds piling high
and threateningly, without
warmth, without comfort.

He lit a cigarette and inhaled
deeply. At the sound of the click-
ing lighter, John Meckler stirred
restlessly in his shallow sleep.

Ch’ao leaned forward, touched
the man’s shoulder. Meckler sat
upright witli a start.

“How long?” he asked sud-
denly, looking around at the
deserted Control room, brightly
lit with flares of light in every
corner.

“Not for a while, yet,” said
the mathematician. “The others
have gone out for coffee. They’ll
bring you some.”

“I could use it.” Fie relaxed,
leaned back, took off his glasses
and laid them neatly on the con-
sole in front of him.

They sat in silence for a
moment, botli watching out the
huge window at the luminous
clouds of stars.

“Think we’ll make it, Ch’ao?”
said Meckler quietly.

"Eventually,” said Ch’ao. “Even-
tually.”

"I mean this time.”

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

“I don’t know. You’re im-
patient.”

“Tired.”

“I too,” said the mathemati-
cian. He sighed heavily and took
a long drag from his cigarette.

“Tell me something,” Meckler
said. “Do you feel responsible?
For these men, I mean.” He
gestured vaguely at the star-laden
sky.

“In an abstract way, I sup-
pose,” said Ch’ao. He pursed his
lips and lowered his head. “Per-
sonally, no.”

“I envy you,” Meckler said. “I
feel personally responsible.”

“That is your business, in a
way. Now I, I am a mathemati-
cian. I explored a certain line of
thought which interested me. It
produced conclusions which in-
terested many people and even-
tually led to the building of the
ship. It’s too long a chain to feel
responsible for the whole thing.”

“You’re an artist. You have an
artist’s detachment.”

“Perhaps.”

“Ch’ao — could diere be — any-
thing out there?”

“Notliing,” said Ch’ao.

“Something we couldn’t detect
with the unmanned ships? Some-
thing that wouldn’t make itself
known until we sent a human
being there?”

“There is no mass in that —
space. None.”

“Energy, then?” asked Meckler.

“Interchangeable terms,” said

Ch’ao. “It’s like asking a man for
red paint, and when he says he
doesn’t have any you say, ‘Well,
just give me red, then.’ The one
term is meaningless without the
other.”

“Can you even conceive of
anything out there?”

“Well,” Ch’ao said hesitantly,
“in an abstract way, again. I
mean it’s possible to set up a
coherent logical system in which
A and not-A are equally true at
the same time.”

“Wouldn’t that be necessary?”
“Yes,” Ch’ao said. “Otherspace,
as we’ve postulated it, is a state
of entropy. That means an ab-
solutely uniform energy level,
tliroughout. If anything did exist,
there would not be a state of
entropy, because there would be
the potential shift from the
higher energy state of existence
to lower.”

“So,” Meckler said, “if there’s
no potentiality for change, there
is no such thing as existence.”
“Actually, it simply means that
tlie word existence, as we know
it, ceases to have any meaning,”
Ch’ao corrected.

“And what happens when you
introduce the possibility of
change into such a state? Isn’t
that what putting a ship there
does?”

“Probably. But I can’t tell you
what happens to the system be-
cause of it. Our math covers the
total-entropy state of Otlierspace.

Intruder

It can’t handle the introduction
of new elements.”

Meckler grunted in acknowl-
edgment.

“So your math doesn’t even
apply when the ship Skips.”

“Substantially not. We have
System I, say — our own universe.
We have System II — Otherspace.
When we take a factor, the ship,
from System I, introduce it into
System II, we have something
else again. System III, you might
call it. The rules of Systems I
and II don’t necessarily apply to
System III.”

“All this leaves me nowhere,”
Meckler said bitterly.

“Sorry,” Ch’ao said.

“Oh, hell, it isn’t your fault.
It’s just that my job is human
beings. I have to try to tell
whether a man is sane or not by
listening to his voice from the
other side of the galaxy.” He
laughed, shortly, without humor.
“And even if I knew for certain,
there isn’t one damn diing I
could do about it. Not one damn
thing.”

The other men began to drift
slowly back to Central Control.
They brought Meckler his cup of
coffee and he sat sipping it
quietly, waiting for the time of
next contact.

On schedule, the speaker whis-
pered, “Saar to Central, Saar to

Central,” and Meckler resumed
his role of Radio Johnny, ‘dumb
radio operator.’

They exchanged time impulses
again, checking each other against
the frequencies of the cesium
clocks that had been synchronized
when the ship left. David’s, the
ship’s, was still running a little
slow, and the difference was in-
creasing.

“One thing I don’t understand,
Johnny,” David Saar said. “They
tell me that I’m not actually
traveling FTL, it just seems that
way. Then why should my clock
frequencies be dropping behind?”
“Far as I can understand it,”
Meckler said, “you don’t have to
travel faster than light for sub-
jective time to slow. It slows
down as you approach the speed
of light. When you Skip back
into normal space, you’re still
traveling at a hell of a speed,
comparatively speaking. I think
it’s around Vac. After all, the
time lag isn’t very damn much,
couple microseconds.”

"Oh,” said David. “I was won-
dering.” He was silent for a mo-
ment before he spoke again.
“Johnny?”

“Yeah.”

“Something else I’m wonder-
ing about.”

“What?”

“Am I die first? Have there
been any others before me?”

Meckler’s heart suddenly felt
constricted.

VENTUHE SCIENCE FICTION

“Hell, no, man,” he said cas-
ually. “You’re the first. Why?”

“Oh, I don't know,” said
David’s voice, sounding trou-
bled. “Dad seems to think some-
body else has been here before.
It just occurred to me to ask.”

The constriction of Mecklcr’s
heart grew almost painful. His
voice was carefully steady when
he replied.

“Dad? What do you mean,
Dave?”

“Did I say that?” David asked,
and the trouble in his voice be-
came more pronounced. "Don’t
know what I could have been
thinking of. It just occurred to
me.”

Meckler felt helpless. He
didn’t dare press questions, for
fear of triggering some reaction
he couldn’t even guess at.

He was forced to chat casually
until the end of the transmission
period.

“Automatic data’s all recxirded,
Dave,” he said. “’Bout time to
shut down. How do you feel?”
“Fine,” David said. “Just great.
SaV' — Johnny — ”

“Yeah.”

“I wish they’d put portlioles in
this tiling. I’d like to see what
Otherspace looks like.”

“You wouldn’t have time,
Dave,” Meckler said. “A micro-
second isn’t much of a Cook’s
tour, you know.”

“That’s right,” said Dave.
"Only — tliat’s funny.”

“What, Dave?”

“It seems a lot longer than that.
I mean, sometimes it docs and
sometimes it doesn’t. When I
look at it one way, it seems like
a hell of a long time in Other-
space. When I look at it different,
it’s no time at all. I just lie down
and pretty soon a bell rings and
I’ve been in and out without
even realizing it. I don’t know.”
“Dreams, maybe,” suggested
Johnny.

“No, not that I remember.
Sometimes, though — sometimes it
seems like there is something I
should remember, but I can never
quite put my finger on it.”

“Well, I wouldn't worry about
it,” Meckler said casually. “I
wouldn’t worry about portholes
cither. They tell me there’s noth-
ing to see over there anpvay.”

“I don’t tliink that’s right,”
Dave said. “I don’t think it is.”
“Why?” Meckler asked, trying
desperately to keep the eagerness
out of his voice.

“Oh — just an idea, I guess.”
Dave’s voice was thoughtful. “It’s
almost time to shut her down.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Meckler said.
“See you next time, then. And
Dave — don’t get too many ideas.”
It was the most he dared risk.

“No,” said David, “I won’t.
It’s not important. I'll ask Dad
about it, he’ll know. He lives
there.”

He signed off before Meckler
could reply.

Intruder

The psychologist sat before the
radio console in a silence that
seemed tangible. Finally he
turned to look at Ch’ao, raised
his hand in a loose gesture of
helplessness. He found sym-
pathy in the mathematician’s al-
mond-shaped eyes. But no help.

Dad be cruel, Dad be kind.
Dad be sightful, Dad be blind.

"I hate you,” said his father.

"I love you,” said his fatlier.

‘‘I see you,” said his father.

“You’re gone,” he said.

Dad be nice. Dad be mean,
Dad be fat. Dad be lean.

"You’re a good boy,” he said.

“You’re a bad boy,” he said.

“I weigh twelve thousand three
hundred and thirty seven inches,”
he said.

"I’m a billion seconds tall,” he
said . . .

“Dad, I can’t understand you,
please talk to me right,” David
said.

Dad was angry his body was
fire his hat was bitter acids, he
screamed :

“No words I I’m talking about
it, that’s what I’m telling you!
No room no room no room!”

"Please, please please
plc<isc **

“That’s me I'm telling you!”
shouted his father and his face
writhing flamefully.

“My eyes are hands!” he
shrieked, and when David could
not understand he raged into a

flaming flower that grew taller
and taller and taller. The flower
seeded, spores of sparks, sparks
of spores, seeding seething boil-
ing in his chest.

The flow’er rooted in his chest
and blossomed hugely, fire and
no white-redness but pain pain.

Dad be All, Dad be None,
Dad be Child, Dad be Son.

Dad be calm, be calm, calm:
“It’s what I say. Me. That’s
who I’m telling you. Me.”

Reasoning, gently, and gentle
reason: suddenly —

Query: “Name and occupa-

tion? You know me.”

He talked to him quietly, but
it was hard to hear because the
fire-flower in his chest bloomed
so loud.

“I tell you ME: is thirty seven
twenty nine twelve sixteen. Got
it? Three doubles in the every-
togetherness making certain of
stasis. That’s how important it
is.”

“Dad,” the fire-flow’er re-
minded them gently. “You know
me, don’t you? You’re kidding
me. Dad.”

’Tou’re a dumb child,” the fire-
flower replied.

Dad be knowing. Dad be not,
Dad be cold. Dad be hot.

“There were others,” said his
father. “I know you.”

“Name and occupation?” he
said. “Place of residence?”

He froze and burned and iced
and fired.

VENTURE SC1E.NCE FICTION

“Dad, how is it with you?”

“I tell you and tell you,” his
father was angry and there was
a tentacle of nothing in his
throat.

“Dad, what I mean is, who
are you?”

“Who are you. Dad?”

“Who are you?”

VII

“Who is Dad?” asked the heavy
man with star-and-comet.

“That,” said Meckler bitterly,
“seems to be the question.”

"The man’s obviously out of
his head.”

“Perhaps,” Meckler said. "Only
perhaps. It seems likely enough.
After all, when a man ceases to
exist he might be expected to de-
velop some imbalance.”

The heavy man was miffed.
“This hardly seems the time for
sarcasm. Captain.”

“Sorry,” said Meckler dis-
couragedly. “I’m tired. I don’t
know what to do. I don’t know
what I’m dealing with. I don’t
know' anything.”

“None of us do,” Ch’ao inter-
posed quietly, before the military
could give his opinion. “He’s re-
gressed to infancy. Possible?”
“Possible,” said Meckler. “Not
in tbis case. He tliinks like an
adult, he talks like an adult, he’s
in every way an adult. Except
that he seems — confused.”

“Who is Dad?”

“His father, I assume.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Meckler said.
"Strength, security, safety per-
haps. It’s a function of fathers
that they deal with situations be-
yond the grasp of a child. ”

“But Saar doesn’t believe him-
self a child.”

“Apparently not. That ties in,
however. ‘Dad’ slips out in un-
considered conversation, but
when I questioned him on it, he
couldn’t recognize it.”

“So he has created a father
figure for security, but refuses to
recognize it on a conscious level?”
“Possibly, possibly, it’s all pos-
sible,” Meckler said. “If he did
recognize the existence of Dad
consciously, it would be an im-
plicit admission that he was
childlike. That is, incapable of
dealing with the situation in
which he finds himself.

“This could all be true, if. If
he has created the father for the
sake of security. If his personal
make-up refuses to allow him to
recognize inability in himself.”
“What other alternative ex-
planation is there? And what will
happen from here on out?”

“Let me look at one other thing
before I answer that,” Meckler
said. “Ch’ao, we’ve gone over this.
There is absolutely nothing in
Otherspace. No energy, no mass,
no nothmg. Nothing can exist
there, right?”

Intruder

Ch’ao nodded silently.

“All right,’’ said Mecklcr,
sponging his forehead. "Now for-
get you know that. Supposing
that somehow — some way we
can’t even dream of — there was
intelligence there.’’

“It can’t be done, John,” said
the Chinese quietly.

“I don’t care. Do it. If such a
thing could be, which we all agree
it could not, but if — what then?”

“There is no way of even
guessing,” Ch’ao said. “It requires
too many assumptions. When the
whole system is assumptions, no
logic is possible.”

“I don’t give a good damn for
logic at the moment,” Meckler
said. “Suppose this intelligence
were aware of the ship. Hell,
you can suppose the whole of
Otherspace is an Intelligence of
some kind, with a capital I. Sup-
pose this intelligence knew
something was happening to its
world?”

“It would doubtless try to
communicate,” said Ch’ao.

“Anthropomorphism,” snapped
Yang.

“Certainly,” said Meckler with-
out rancor. “But suppose it tried,
and the communication were so
utterly foreign that the human
mind could not accept it. What
then?”

"The human would go mad,”
said Ch’ao.

“One possibility,” said Meck-
ler. “But there is one other. And

that is that the human mind
would try to shape the communi-
cation into something compre-
hensible, something recognizable.
How successful it would be
would depend on the adaptability
of the particular mind, I sup-
pose.”

“Are you trying to say that
some — alien intelligence is in
communication with Saar? That
it appears to him as his father?
Is that who you think Dad is? ”

“Not dogmatically,” Meckler
said. “I don’t know. But if —
what form would the communi-
cation take?”

“You seem to have the ideas,”
Ch’ao said. “Go ahead.”

, “All right. It seems to me the
basic elements of that communi-
cation are obvious. First: identi-
fication. The intelligence would
want to know what was happen-
ing, identify the agent. Second,
it would identify itself as In-
telligence. That is, it would make
the human aware of its existence,
and perhaps attempt to describe
itself. Thirdly, it would make its
— desires known, whatever they
might be.”

“I can’t conceive of intelligence
in a state of entropy,” said
Ch’ao.

“Hell,” Meckler snapped. “I
can’t even conceive of a state of
entropy, but we seem to have one
just around the corner.”

No one spoke for a moment.
Finally the military offered, “All

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

right, supposing vve grant all this
wild theorizing. Why should the
Intelligence appear as the boy’s
father?”

Meckler hesitated before an-
swering. His voice was flat and
even when he spoke.

“The only idea I have on that
is this, and it isn’t a comfortable
notion: just about the most po-
tent image of superiority that a
human can handle is the image
of the father as held by a baby.
Father the All, father the power-
ful, fatlier — whose world is in-
comprehensible.”

“You postulate,” said Ch’ao
slowly, “an entity, an alien —
intelligence — so superior to hu-
manity that it can be conceived
of only in terms of a child’s rela-
tion to its father?” He shook his
head. “The insanity theory is
simpler, more familiar and likely.
When two theories explain the
facts equally well, you choose the
simpler.”

“Agreed,” said Meckler.
“There’s just one thing — we don’t
know yet what the facts are.”

VIII

Fury.

Rage.

Fire . . .

Redly light and father tall,
burning burning burning.

The raging finger, long as
pain, deep as agony, fire-knuckled,
probing, burning, twisting.

“No more. Dad, no more.”
Quietly, his father: “To-

getherness is me with all in one
by-standing. Got it? Without no-
being, not-existence coming to-
gether with eyes with hands with
heart with brain.”

“Dad, please, no more.”

The head-deep hand, redly
tivisting, wrenching out, a tear-
ing away, and flashing hotly
stars without and no unflame to
be found.

Patiently: “You know me.”
Query: “Name and occupa-

tion? Place of residence?”

“Dad,” said David, “I want to
ask you, how is it with you?”

“Ah,” said Dad. “My eyes are
hands,” he said, with hatred
glowing fircwords on the air.
“That’s what I’m talking about,
is me! Listen:

Affirmation: ME
Affirmation: YOU
Affirmation: NOT-ONE
“Dad, I know that, but what
can I do?”

Rage: YOU PROMISED

PROMISED NOT COME BACK!
“Dad, I mean, who are you?”
“What I mean is, who are
you?”

“Who are you?”

Affirmation : Without broad

high long. Not-limit understand-
ing by we-in-one. Affirmation:
deeply water running fire, with
tallness reaching and extension
to without.

“Who are you: ME.”

Intruder

YOU ALL IS ONE CAN BE
COMING WITHIN TO RE-
TURN BY TOGETHERNESS.

Affirm; PAIN.

The flower blossomed, fire
shrieking, seeded seethed, grow-
ing and burgeoning beyond,
coursing prickles burning sharp
and clear.

"Dad, tell me! Tell me! Tell
me!”

Coming within: TOGETHER-
NESS RETURN . . . and fire-
flower growing taller bursting
richly spores of sparks to seed and
seed and seed and grow and
bloom making other-place this-
place.

"Coming within? Dad, what is
it, coming within? Tell me. Dad,
tell me!”

. . . Dad standing beside.
Dad be gentle. Dad touching,
flowingbeing.

David screamed and screamed
and screamed.

"Dad Dad Dad Dad! No room!
No room!”

David screaming: final agony,
fullness, bursting without merci-
fulness of destruction.

Not-life, un-death. Merging
merging pain and screaming and
never and never an ending.
Never. Never.

Never.

"Now,” said Dad.

“Now,” he said.

"Now.”

Redly: HAPPINESS.

Dad is happy.

Nothing was said. There was
nothing to say unless David
opened the gates, which he never
did.

It was conversation, chatter
while the automatic recorders
chuckled and whimpered over
their tapes.

"Well, you’re on the last lap
now, Dave,” Mccklcr said cheer-
fully.

"Guess so,” Dave agreed. “One
more hop and home.”

"Still feeling O.K?”

“Sure,” said Dave.

"Man, you’re a hero now.
Know it? Sure like to be in your
shoes,” MeckIcr said. . . .
Would I?

"Yeah . . . well. I’m anxious
to get home,” Dave said. "Anxious
as hell.”

"You’ll get a reception to re-
member, rU guarantee that.”
"Sounds good. Well, let’s shut
her down, Johnny. Oh, say — ”
"Yeah?” said MeckIcr.

"I forgot to tell you.”

"So tell me.”

"Dad’s coming home with me.”
"Dad?” asked MeckIcr as casu-
ally as he could.

"Yeah,” said David. "He's go-
ing to make tilings right. Well,
see you pretty soon, Johnny.”
Click.

“David!” Mccklcr shouted.
“Central to Saar, Central to
Saar. . .

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

The receiver buzzed emptily in
the silent room.

Meckler stayed seated, staring
at the speaker, trying to think.

“What's it mean? Has he gone
under? Is be completely gone?”

"I don’t know,” said Meckler.
“Will he come back like the
others? Just come back and die?”
“I almost hope so,” Meckler
said, so softly the men around him
did not hear him clearly.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said quietly.
“Nothing at all. Dad’s going to
make things right.”

“Meckler, I can’t understand
what you’re saying.”

“Forget it,” said Meckler, ris-
ing slowly to his feet. He sur-
veyed the faces of the men around
him and said, “If any of you are
religious men, I have a sugges-
tion.”

“What’s that?”

“Pray,” he said flatly. “Just —
pray.”

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If you’re now attending high school or college (or are doing
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school you attend, and your present status (soph? senior? grad? ).
Address: Student OjJ^er, VENTURE Science Fiction, 527 Madi-
son Ave., New York 22, N. Y.

VIRGINIA

by C. M. KORNBLUTH

This is the tale of an improbable young man
and the unlikely fate he meets. Or is it unlikely?
Sometimes we wonder . . . but never mind that now.
The important thing, after all, is to continue smiling.

James “Bunny” Coogler woke
on the morning of his father’s
funeral with a confused feeling
that it was awfully crowded in his
bedroom. Ohara, his valet (of tlie
Shimanoseki Oharas, and not to
be confused with the Dublin
branch of the family) was shak-
ing his sleeve and saying; “You
wake up, Missah Bunny! Ah, such
important gentermen come see
you!” Bunny groped on the bed-
side table for the sunglasses to
shelter his pink-rimmed eyes from
the light. Ohara popped them onto
his face and then rapidly poured
a prairie oyster, a bromo and a
cup of black coffee laced with
brandy into him. Bunny’s usual
rate of morning vibration began
to dampen towards zero and he
peered about the room through the
dark lenses.

“Morning, young Cbogler,” said
a gruff voice. The outline was
tliat of J. G. Barsax, senior part-
ner of his late father’s firm. A
murmur of greeting came from

three otlier elephantine figures.
They were Gonfalonieri of First
American, Witz of Diversified
Limited, and McChesney of
Southern Development Inc. If an
efficient bomb had gone off in the
room at that moment it would
have liquidated eighteen billion
dollars’ worth of Top Management
and Ownership.

“Sorry about your father,” Bar-
sax grunted. "Mind if we sit? Not
much time before the funeral.
Have to brief you fast.”

Bunny said, “Mr. Sankton told
me what I’d have to do, Mr. Bar-
sax. Rise after the ‘Amen,’ lead
tlie procession past the casket, up
the center aisle to the limousine
exit — ’’

“No, no, no. Of course you
know the funeral form. I’m talk-
ing about tlie financial briefing.
Coogler, you’re a very wealthy
young man.”

Bunny took off his sunglasses.
“I am?” he asked uncertainly.
"Surely not. There’s this trust

VENTUHE SCIENCE FICTION

thing he was always talking about
to pay me twenty thousand a
year — ”

"Talked,” said Gonfalonieri.
“That’s all he did. He never got
it on paper. You’re the sole heir
to the liquid equivalent of, say,
three and a half billion dollars.”

Ohara hastily refilled the cup
with laced coffee and put it in
Bunny’s hand.

"So,” little Mr. Witz said soft-
ly, "there are certain things you
must know. Certain rules that
have sprung up which We ob-
serve.” The capitalized plural pro-
noun was definitely sounded.
Whether it was to be taken as
royal, editorial or theological, who
can say?

They proceeded to brief Bunny.

Firstly, he must never admit
that he was wealthy. He might
use the phrase “what little I
have,” accompanied by a whimsi-
cal shrug.

Secondly, he must never, under
any circumstances, at any time,
give anything to anybody. When-
ever asked for anything he was
to intimate that this one request
he simply could not grant, that
it was the one crushing straw
atop his terrible burden of char-
itable contributions.

Thirdly, whenever offered any-
thing — from a cigar to a million-
dollar market tip from a climher
— he must take it without thanks
and complain bitterly that the
gift was not handsomer.

Fourthly, he must look on
Touching Capital as morally
equivalent to coprophagia, but he
must not attempt to stint himself
by living on the interest of his
interest; that was only for New
Englanders.

Fifthly, when he married he
must choose his bride from one
of Us.

'Tou mean, one of you four
gentlemen?” Bunny asked. He
thought of J.G.’s eldest daughter
and repressed a shudder.

"No,” said Witz. "One of Us
in the larger sense. You will come
to know who is who, and even-
tually acquire an instinct that
will enable you to distinguish
between a millionaire and a per-
son of real substance.”

"And that,” said Barsax, "is the
sum of it. We shall see you at
the funeral and approach you
later, Coogler.” He glanced at his
watch. "Come, gentlemen.”

Bunny had a mechanical turn
of mind; he enjoyed the Museum
of Suppressed Inventions at J.G.’s
Carolina estate. The quavery old
curator pottered after him ex-
plaining.

"This, sir, is the hundred-mile-
per-gallon carburetor. I was more
active when it came out in ’36 —
I was a Field Operative then. I
tracked it down to a little Iowa
village on a rumor from a patent
attorney; it was quite a struggle
to suppress that one. Quite a

Virginia

Struggle, sir! But — the next case,
please, sir — it would have been
rendered obsolete witliin two
years. Yes, sir, that’s when tlie
Gasoline Pill came out. Let me
show you, sir!”

He happily popjred one of the
green pills into a gallon of water
and lectured as it bubbled and
fumed and turned the water into
100-octane gasoline.

The Eternal Match was inter-
esting, the Two-Cent Sirloin was
delicious, and the Vanishing
Cream vanished a half-inch roU
of fat from Bunny’s belly while he
watched. “But Lord bless you,
sir,” tittered the curator, "what
would be the point of giving
people something that worketl?
They’d just go ahead and use it
and then when they had no more
need they’d stop using it, eh?

“And this one, sir, it isn’t
really what you’d call suppressed.
We’re just working on it to build
it up some; perhaps in five years
we’ll have it looking like it costs
five thousand dollars, and then
well be able to sell it.” “It” was
three-dimensional, full-color tele-
vision; the heart of the system
was a flashlight battery, a small
C-clamp and a pinch of baking
soda.

Bunny visited also the vast
pest-breeding establishment in
the Rockies, where flies, roaches,
mice, gnats, boll-weevils, the elm-
rot fungus and the tobacco-mo-
saic virus were patiently raised to

maximum virulence and dis-
patched by couriers to their proper
places all over the world. The
taciturn Connecticut Yankee who
ran the sprawling plant snapped
at him, “Dangecl better mouse-
traps almost wiped out the mouse-
trap industry. Think people’d
have better sense. DDT almost
killed off pesticide — whole
dangecl business, employing two
hundred thousand. They think of
that? Naw! So we had ter breed
them DDT-resistant strains and
seed ’em everywhere.”

Bunny began to acquire the in-
stinct to which Witz had referred.
When he encountered an Oil
Texan he could tell that the
man’s nervous hilarity and brag
stemmed from his poverty, and he
pitied him. When he encoun-
tered one day at Gonfalonieri’s
place in Baja California a cer-
tain quiet fellow named Briggs,
he knew without being told that
Briggs was one of Us. It was no
surprise to learn later that
Briggs held all the basic patents
on Water.

Briggs it was, indeed, wbo
took bim aside for an important
talk. The quiet man offered him
a thousand-dollar cigar (for the
growing of whose tobacco Briggs
had caused an artificial island to
be built in the deep Central
Pacific at the exactly correct point
of temperature, wind and humid-
ity) and said to him, “It’s time
you took a wife.”

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

Bunny, who could not these
days leaf through Vogue or the
New Yorker without a tender,
reminiscent smile for each of tlie
lovely models shown in the ad-
vertisements, disagreed. "Can’t see
why, Briggs,’’ he muttered. "Hav-
ing jolly good time. Never used
to have much luck with girls —
all different now. Mean to say,
with — ’’ he gave the whimsical
little shrug — "what little I have,
doing awfully well and it doesn’t
cost me anything. Queer. When I
had ten-twenty thou’, when I was
poor, had to buy corsages, din-
ners. All different now. They buy
me things. Platinum watches.
Have simply dozens. But the rules
— have to take ’em. Queer.”

"We’ve all been through it,”
Briggs said. “When you get bored
let me know.”

"Oh, promise,” Bunny said.
“Absolutely promise.”

He spent the next six months in
Hollywood where golden girls
vied in plying him with cog ati
vin, solid iridium meat grinders
and similar trifles. One charming
lady who had come out to the
sound stages in 1934 presented
him with a genuine hand-em-
broidered antique scabbard said
to date back to the Crusades. It
was a pleasant gift and it varied
the . . .

. . . the monotony?

He sat up abruptly on the mu-
tation-mink coverlet, causing the
shapely blonde head which re-

mained on the silken pillow to
emit a small sleepy snort. i

"Monotony,” Bunny said in a '

tragic whisper. "Definitely.” He i

went home to Ohara, though not
neglecting to pick up as he left \
his little present for the evening,
a golden nutcracker set with dia-
monds and lined with unborn
leopard pelt.

Ohara dipped mto his store of
Oriental wisdom in an effort to !
console him. He suggested, “Mis-
sah Bunny think if must be mo- i

notonized, what beautifurr way
to get monotonized?” |

It did not help. |

Ohara suggested, “You try j

make funny, fo’get monotony. Fo’
exampurr, spend coupre mirrion
dorras make big reso’t town, cawr
same Schmir-ton, Ohio. Think
how mad Missah Nickey be, he
put up hoterr, have to cawr same
Hoterr Hir-ton Schmir-ton! Oh,
raffs!” I

It would not do.

"Ohara,” Bunny said tragically,

"I would give — ” he shrugged
whimsically — "what little I have
not to be bored with, ah, life.”

The impassive Oriental coun- I

tenance of his manservant flick-
ered briefly in a grimace. His or- j

ders were clear, and he knew how ]

terrible would be the consequences j

of disobedience. |

Bunny tossed fitfully alone in
his bed an hour later, and Ohara
was on the phone to an unlisted ]

Ne^v York number. "This Ohara,”

Virginia

lie whispered. “Missah Bunny talk
about giving away money. Awr
his money.”

The responding voice was that
of an Englishman. It said:
“Thank you, Ohara. One hopes, of
course, for your sake, that the in-
formation has arrived in time.
One hopes devoutly that it will
not be necessary to inflict the
Death of a Thousand Cuts on
you. A book could be written
about Number Three Hundred
and Twenty-Eight alone, and as
for Number Four Elundred and
One — ! Well, I won’t keep you
with my chattering.” He hung up.

Within minutes tlie lonely
house in a canyon was sur-
rounded; the Fourth Plutocratic
Airborne and Amphibious As-
sault Force was the ultimate in
efficient mercenary troops. By
dawn they had Bunny on his way
to Barsax’ Carolina estate under
heavy sedation.

He woke in the guest room he
knew, just off the corridor which
contained the Museum of Sup-
pressed Inventions. Little Mr.
Witz and quiet Mr. Briggs were
there. With granite faces they told
him: “You have broken the Code,
young Cooglcr. You said there
was something you valued above
money. You have got to go.”

“Please,” Bunny blubbered. “I
didn’t mean it. I’ll marry your
daughter. I’ll marry both your
daughters! Just don’t kill me.”

Mr. Witz said implacably,

"Our decent, money-fearing girls
wouldn’t have anything to do
with a dirty plutophobe like you,
young Coogler. If only your poor
father had put through the trust
fund in time — well, thank Heaven
he’s not alive to see this day. But
we won’t kill you, young Coogler.
It is not within our power to cause
the death of a billionaire as if he
were an animal or mere human
being. What we can and will do
is quarantine you. In Virginia.”

This sounded like a rank non
sequitiir to Bunny until they took
him to the Museum and trundled
out a one-man space ship in-
vented early in 1923 by a Herr
Rudolf Grenzbach of Czernovitz,
Upper Silesia, whose body had
been found in Lower Silesia later
that year.

Officers of the Fourth P.A.A.-
A.F. loaded him into the bomb-
like contrivance over his spirited
protest and pre-set the course. Vir-
ginia, it seemed, was an asteroid
rather than the neighboring state.
They fired the rockets and Bunny
was on his way.

Four years later Mr. Witz and
Mr. Briggs conferred again.
“Perhaps,” said Mr. Witz, “we’ve
put enough of a scare into him.
Let’s radio the lad and find out
whether he’s given up his wild
seditious notions and is ready to
be rescued.”

They tuned in the asteroid Vir-
ginia on another suppressed in-

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

vention. “Young Coogler,” Briggs
said into the microphone. ‘This is
Briggs. We wish to know whether
you’ve come to your senses and
are ready to take your place in
society — ours, of course.”

There squawked over the loud-
speaker the voice of Bunny. “I
say, what xms that. No, not now,
not for a second please. Where
did that voice come from? Can
you hear me, Mr. Briggs?”

"I hear you,” Mr. Briggs.

“E.xtraordinary! Another inven-
tion, eh?”

“Yes,” said Briggs. “I am call-
ing, young Coogler, to learn
whether you are properly con-
trite and if so to arrange for your
rescue.”

"Rescue?” said the voice of
Bunny. "Why, no thanks. That
won’t be necessary. Having a fine
time here. They need me, you
know’. They love me for, ah, my-
self alone. Not the dashed money.
Double-dash the money, I say!”

Mr. Briggs, white to the lips,
broke the connection.

"He meant you to do that,” Mr,
Witz remarked.

"I know. Let him rot there.”

The quavery old curator had
been listening. “On Virginia?” he
asked tremulously. “You don’t rot
on Virginia. Don’t you gentlemen
know how it got its name?”
“Never bothered to find out,”
Mr. Briggs snapped. "Since you’re
bursting to tell us, you might as
well.”

The curator beamed. "They call
it Virginia because it’s the plane-
toid of virgins. The dangdest
thing. Perpetual virgins. The Plu-
tocratic Space Force says they’ve
never seen anything like it, not
on Mars, not on Callisto. Self-
renewing — the daugdest thing!”
Mr. Briggs and Mr. Witz
looked at each other. After a while
Mr. Witz spoke.

"Bunny,” he said reflectively.
"Bunny. He was well named.”

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The Game of Glory

a novelet by

POUL ANDERSON

Captain Flandry came fo the dying marine under a red
dwarf sun, with snowflakes falling like blood-drops out
of great, clotted clouds. . . don't lap my blood so
fast!" the waning boy screamed. And he gasped enough
more before he died to send Flandry on a long and deadly
hunt to a watery world where a monstrous enemy waited
for any man who believed in freedom— and in life. . . .

A MURDERED MAN ON A WIN-
ter planet gave Flandry his first
clue. Until then, he had only
known that a monster fled Con-
jumar in a poisoned wreck of a
spaceship, which might have
gone ttvcnty light-years before
killing its pilot but could surely
never have crossed the Spican
marches to refuge.

And the trouble was — even for
the Terran Empire, which con-
tained an estimated four million
stars — a sphere twenty light-
years across held a devil’s num-
ber of suns.

Flandry went through mo-

tions. He sent such few agents as
could be spared from other jobs,
for tliey were desperately under-
manned in the frontier provinces,
to make inquiries on the more
likely planets within that range.
Of course they drew blanks. Prob-
ability was stacked against them.
Even if they actually visited what-
ever VTOrld the fugitive had
landed on, he would be lying low
for a w'hile.

Flandry swore, recalled his
men to more urgent tasks, and
put tlie monster under filed-but-
not-forgotten. Two years went
by. He w’as sent to Betelgeuse and

The Game of Glory

discovered how to lie to a tele-
path. He slipped into the Merse-
ian Empire itself, wormed and
blackmailed until he found a
suitable planet (uninhabited, ter-
restroid, set aside as a hunting
preserve of the aristocrats) and got
home again: whereafter the Ter-
ran Navy quietly built an ad-
vanced base there and Flandry
wondered if the same tiring had
happened on his side of the fence.
He went to Terra on leave, was
invited to the perpetual banquet
of the Lyonid family, spent three
epochal months, and was never
quite sure whether he seduced the
wrong man’s wife or she him. At
any rate, he fought a reluctant
duel, gave up hope of early pro-
motion to rear admiral, and ac-
cepted re-assignment to the Spi-
can province.

Thus it was he found himself
on Brae.

This world had been more or
less independent until a few
months ago. Then military con-
siderations forced the establish-
ment of a new base in tire region.
It did not have to be Brae, but
Brae was asked, by a provincial
governor who thought its people
would be delighted at the extra
trade and protection. The Braean
High Temple, which had long
watched its old culture and reli-
gion sapped by Terran influence,
declined. One does not decline
an Imperial invitation. It was re-
peated. This time it was refused.

The provincial governor insisted.
Brae said it would go over his
head and appeal to the Emperor
himself. The governor, who did
not want attention drawn to his
precise mode of government,
called for local Navy help.

Wherefore Flandry walked
through smashed ruins under a
red dwarf sun, with a few snow-
flakes falling like blood drops out
of great clotted clouds. He was
directing the usual project in
cases like tliis — search, inquiry,
more search, more interrogation,
until the irreconcilables had been
found and exiled, the safely col-
laboration-minded plugged into a
governmental framework. But
when the blaster crashed, he
whirled and ran toward tire noise
as if to some obscure salvation.

"Sir!” cried the sergeant of his
escort. "Sir, not there — snipers,
terrorists — wait!"

Flandry leaped the stump of a
wall, zigzagged across a slushy
street, and crouched behind a
wrecked flyer. His own handgun
was out, weaving around; his eyes
flickered in habitual caution. On
a small plaza ahead of him stood
a squad of Imperial marines.
They must have been on routine
patrol when someone had fired at
them from one of the surrounding
bouses. They responded with ti-
ger precision. A tracer dart,
flipped from a belt almost tire mo-
ment die shot came, followed the
trail of ions to a certain facade.

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

A rover bomb leaped from its
shoulder-borne rack, and the en-
tire front wall of the house went
up in shards. Before the explosion
ended, the squad attacked. Some
of the debris struck their helmets
as they charged.

Flandry drifted to the plaza.
He saw now why the men’s reac-
tion was to obliterate: it was an
invariable rule when a marine
was bushwhacked dead.

He stooped over the victim.
This was a young fellow, African-
descended, with husky shoulders;
but his skin had gone gray. He
gripped his magnetic rifle in
drilled reflex (or was it only a
convulsive clutching at his moth-
er’s breast, as a dying man’s
mouth will try to suck again?)
and stared through frog-like gog-
gles on a turtle-hke helmet. He
was not, after all, dead yet. His
blood bubbled from a stomach
ripped open, losing itself in mud-
dy snow. Under that dim sun, it
looked black.

Flandry glanced up. His escort
had surrounded him, though their
faces turned wistfully toward the
cru7np-cnitnp of blasters and
bomb guns. They were marines
too.

“Get him to a hospital,” said
Flandry.

“No use, sir,” answered the ser-
geant. "He’d be dead before we
arrived. We’ve no revival equip-
ment here yet, either, or stuff to
keep him functional till they can

grow another belly on him.”

Flandry nodded and hunkered
down by the boy. "Can I help
you, son?” he asked, as gently as
might be.

The wide lips shinned back
from shining teeth. "Ah, ah, ah,”
it gasped. “It’s him in Uhunhu
that knows.” Tlie eyes wallowed
in tlieir sockets. “Ai! ’List nay,
tliey said. Nay let recruiters ’list
)’ou . , . damned Empire . . .
even to gain war-skill, don’t ’list
. . . shall freedom come from
slave-masters, asked he in
Uhunhu. He and his ’ull teach
what we must know, see you?”
The boy’s free hand closed wildly
on Flandry’s. “D’you understand?”

"Yes,” said Flandry. “It’s all
right. Go to sleep.”

“Ai, ai, look at her up there,
grinning — ” Despite himself,
Flandry stared skyward. He was
crouched by a fountain, which
now' held merely icicles. A slender
column rose from the center, and
on top of it the nude statue of a
girl. She w’as not really human,
she had legs too long, and a tail
and pouch and sleek fur, but Flan-
dry had not often seen such danc-
ing loveliness trapped in metal;
she was springtime and a first
trembling kiss under windy pop-
lars. Tlie waning marine screamed.

“Leave me lone, leave me 'lone,
you up there, leave me lone!
Stop grinning! I ’listed for to
learn how to make Nyanza free,
)ou hear up there, don’t lap my

The Game of Gloiy

blood so fast. It’s nay iny fault I
made more slaves. I wanted to be
free too! Get your teetli out of me,
girl . . . mother, mother, don’t
cat me, mother — ” Presently the
boy died.

Cantain Sir Dominic Flandry,
Intelligence Corps, Imperial Ter-
restrial Navy, squatted beside him,
under the fountain, while the ma-
rines blew down another house or
two for good measure. A squadron
of full-armored infantry did a
belt-flit overhead, like jointed face-,
less dolls. A stringed instrument
keened from a window across the
square: Flandry did not know
the Braean scale, the music might
be dirge or defiance or ballad or
coded signal.

He asked finally: “Anyone

know where this chap was from?”

His escort looked blank. “A
colonial, sir, judging from the ac-
cent,” ventured one of the pri-
vates. "We sign on a lot, you
know.”

“Tell me more,” snapped Flan-
dry. He brooded a while longer.
“There’ll be records, of course.”

His task had suddenly shifted.
He would have to leave another
man in charge here and check the
dead boy’s home himself, so great
was the personnel shortage. Those
delirious babblings could mean
much or nothing. Most likely
nothing, but civilization was
spread hideously thin out here,
where the stars faded toward bar-
barism, and die Empire of Mer-

seia beyond, and the great un-
mapped Galactic night beyond
that.

As yet he did not think of the
monster, only diat, he was lone-
some among his fellow conquer-
ors and would be glad to get off
on a one-man mission. At least a
world bearing some Africans
might be decently warm.

He shivered and got up and
left the square. His escort trudged
around him, their slung rifles
pointed at a thin blue sky. Behind
them the girl on the fountain
smiled.

The planet was five parsecs
from Brae. It was the third of an
otherwise uninteresting F5 dwarf,
its official name was Nyanza, it
had been colonized some 500
years back during the breakup of
the Commonwealth. It had been
made an Imperial client about a
century ago, a few abortive re-
volts were crushed, now there was
only a resident — which meant a
trouble-free but unimportant and
little visited world. The popula-
tion was estimated at 10'^. That
was all the microfiles had to say
about Nyanza.

Flandry had checked them after
identifying tlie murdered man,
who turned out to be Thomas
Umbolu, 19, free-born commoner
of Jairnovaunt on Nyanza, no de-
|5endents, no jx;rsonal oaths or ob-

100

VENTUHE SCIENCE FICTION

ligations of fealty, religion "Chris-
tian variant,” height 1.82 meter,
weight 84 kilos, blood type O plus.
. . . His service record was clean,
though only one year old. A rou-
tine pre-induction hypno had
shown no serious disaffection; but
of course that hadn’t meant a
damn thing since the techniques
of deep conditioning became gen-
eral knowledge; It was just an-
other bureaucratic ritual.

Flandry took a high-speed flit-
ter and ran from Brae. Even so,
the enforced idleness of the trip
was long enough to remind him
acutely tliat he had been celibate
for weeks. He spent a good deal of
the time in calisthenics. It bored
him rigid, but a trim body had
saved his life more than once and
made it easy to get bed partners
on softened worlds like Terra.

When the robopBot said they
were going into approach, he spent
some while dressing himself. An
Intelligence officer had wide lati-
tude as regards uniforms, and
Flandry took more advantage of it
than most. After due considera-
tion, he clad his tall form in pea-
cock-blue tunic, with white cross-
belts and as much gold braid as
regulations would stand; red sash
and matched guns, needier and
blaster; iridescent white trousers;
soft black boots of authentic Ter-
ran beefleather. He hung a scar-
let cloak from his shoulders and
cocked a winged naval cap on his
long sleek head. Surveying hhn-

self in tlie mirror, he saw a lean
sunlamp-browned face, gray eyes,
seal-brown hair and mustache,
straight nose, high cheekbones:
yes, he knew his last plasmecos-
metic job had made his face too
handsome, but somehow never got
around to changing it again, fie
put a cigaret between his lips, ad-
justed its jaunty angle with care,
inhaled it to light, and went to
his pilot’s seat. Not that he had
anything to do with the actual
piloting.

Nyanza shone before him, the
clearest and most beautiful blue of
his life, streaked with white cloud-
belts and shuddering with great
auroral streamers. He spotted two
moons, a smallish one close in
and a large one furtlier out. He
scowled. Where were the land
masses? His robot made radio con-
tact and the screen offered him a
Caucasoid face above a short-
sleeved shirt.

"Captain Sir Dominic Flandry,
Imperial Navy Intelligence, re-
questing permission to land.”
Sometimes he wondered what he
would do if his ixilite formula ever
met a rude no.

The visage gaped. "Oh . . .
oh . . . already?”

“Hm?" said Flandry. He caught
himself. “Ah, yes,” he said wisely.

"But only today, sir!" babbit
the face. "VVdiy, we haven’t even
thought about sending a courier
out yet — it’s been such a night-
mare — oh, thank God you’re here,

101

The Game of Glory

sir! You’ll see for yourself, at once,
there isn’t a Technician in the
City — on Altla — on all Nyanza,
who doesn’t set loyalty to his Ma-
jesty above life itself!”

“I’m sure his Majesty will be
\ery much relieved,” said Flan-
dry. “Now, if you please, how
about a landing beam?” After a
pause, a few clicks, and the be-
ginning downward rush of his
ship: “Oh, by the way. Bubbles.
Where did you put your conti-
nents today?”

“Continents, sir?”

“You know. Large dirty places
to stand on.”

“Of corirse I know, sir!” The
control man drew himself up.
“\Ve’re no parochials in the'City.
I’ve been to Spica myself.”

"Would it be despicable if you
had not?” mused Flandry. Most of
him was listening to the fellow's
accent. The inexhaustible varia-
tions on Anglic were a hobby of
his.

“But as for tlie continents, sir,
why, I thought you would know.
Nyanza has none. Altla is just a
medium-sized island. Otherwise
there are only rocks and reefs, sub-
merged at double high tide, or
even at Loa high,”

“Oh, I knew,” said Flandry re-
assuringly. “I just wanted to be
sure you knew.” Fie turned off the
receiver and sat thinking. Damn
those skimpy pilot’s manuals!
He’d have had to go to Spica for
detailed information. If only there

were a faster-than-light equiva-
lent of radio. Instant communica-
tions unified planets; but the days
and weeks and months between
stars let their systems drift cul-
turally apart — let hell brew for
years, unnoticed till it boiled over
— made a slow growth of feudal-
ism, within the Imperial structure
itself, inevitable. Of course, that
woidd give civilization something
to fall back on when the Long
Night finally came.

The spaceport was like ten
thousand minor harbors: little

more than a grav-grid, a field, and
some ancillary buildings, well out
of town. Beyond the hangars, to
west and south, Flandry saw a
greenness of carefully tended for-
est. Eastward rose the spires of a
small ancient city. Nortliward the
ground sloped down in harsh
grass and boulders until it met a
smothering white surf and an im-
possibly blue ocean. The sky
alxive was a little darker than
Terra’s — less dust to scatter light
— and'' cloudless; the sun was
blindinglv fierce, bluish tinged. It
was local summer: Altla lay at
35° N. latitude on a Terra-sized
planet with a 21° axial tilt. The
air held an illusion of being cooler
than it was, for it blew briskly
and smelled of salt and the ultra-
violet-rich sun gave it a thunder-
ous tinge of ozone.

Still, Flandry wished he had
not been quite such a dude. The
portmaster, another blond cauca-

102

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

sold, looked abominably comforta-
ble in shorts, blouse, and kepi.
Flandry took a morose satisfac-
tion in noting that the comfort
was merely physical.

“Portmaster Heinz von Sondcr-
burg, sir, at your service. Natu-
rally, we waive quarantine on
your behalf; no Imperial knight
would — Ah. Your luggage will be
seen to, Captain . . . Flandry?
Of course. Most honored. I have
communicated with her Excel-
lency and am happy to report she
can offer you the usual official hos-
pitality. Otherwise we would have
had to do our poor best for you in
the City—”

“Her Excellency?” asked Flan-
dry when they were airborne.

“Is that not the proper usage?”
Von Sonderburg made washing
motions with his hands. "Oh,
dear, I am so sorry. This is such
an isolated planet — the occasion
so seldom arises — Believe me, sir,
we arc uncouth only in manner.
The City, at least, has an enlight-
ened forward-looking spirit of ab-
solute loyalty to the Imperium
which — ”

“It’s just that I thought, in a
case like this, where the only Ter-
rans on the planet are the resident
and family, they’d have appointed
a man.” Flandry looked down to-
ward the city. It was old, hap-
hazardly raised out of native stone,
with steep narrow streets, teem-
ing pedestrians, very few cars or
flyers.

But the docks w'ere big, sleekly
modern, and aswarm with ships.
He made out everything from
plastic pirogues to giant subma-
rines. There was a niajority of
sailing craft, rvhich implied an
unhurried esthetic-minded cul-
ture; but they were built along
radical hydrodynamic lines, which
meant that the culture also appre-
ciated efficiency. A powered tug
was leaving the bay with a long
tail of loaded barges, and air
transport W'as extensively in use.

Elsewhere Flandry recognized
a set of large sea-w'ater process-
ing units and their attached fac-
tories, where a thousand dissolved
substances were shaped into use-
fulness. A twin-hulled freighter
was unloading bales of . . . sea
weed? ... at the dock of an
obvious plastics plant. So, he
thought, most of Nyanza fished,
hunted, and ranched the planet-
wide ocean; this one island took
the raw^ materials and gave back
metal, chemical fuel, synthetic
timbers and resins and glassites
and fibers, engines. He was fa-
miliar enough with pelagic tech-
nics — most overpopulated worlds
turned back at last to Mother
Ocean. But here they had begun
as sailors, from the very first. It
should make for an interesting
society. . . .

Von Sonderburg’s voice jerked
back his attention. “But of course,
poor Freeman Bannerji was a
man. I am merely referring to his.

103

The Game of Glory

all, his relict, poor Lady Varvara.
She is an Ayres by birth, you
know, the Ayres’ of Antarctica.
She has borne her loss with the
true fortitude of Imperial aristo-
cratic blood, yes, we can be very
proud to have been directed by
the late husband of Lady Varvara
Ayres Bannerji.”

Flandry constructed his sen-
tence to preserve the illusion:
“Do you know the precise time he
died?”

“Alas, no, sir. You can speak to
the City constabulary, but I fear
even they would have no exact in-
formation. Sometime last night,
after he retired. You understand,
sir, we have not your advanced
police methods here. A harpoon
gun — oh, what a way to meet
one’s final rest!” Von Sonderburg
shuddered delicately.

“The weapon has not been
found?” asked Flandry impassively.

“No, I do not believe so, sir.
The killer took it with him, port-
able, you know. He must have
crept up the wall with vac-soles,
or used a flung grapnel to catch
the windowsill and — His Ex-
cellency was a sound sleeper and
his lady, ah, preferred separate
quarters. Ah . . . you can take
it for granted, sir, I am certain,
that the murderer did not go
through the house to reach Free-
man Bannerji’s retiring chamber.
The servants are all of Technician
birth, and no Technician would
dream of — ”

The resident’s mansion hove
into view. It was probably 75
years old, but its metal and tinted
plastic remained a blatant, arro-
gant leap in formal gardens,
amidst a shrill huddle of tene-
ments. As die aircar set down,
Flandry noticed that the City
population was mostly caucasoid,
not even very dark-skinned. They
were crowded together in child-
pullulating streets, blowsy women
waved excited arms and shouted
their hagglings, such as the men
as did not work in industry kept
grimy little shops. A pair of na-
tive constables in helmet and
breastplate stood guard at the
mansion gates. Those were tall
Africans, who used stepped-down
shockbeams with a sort of casual
contempt to prevent loitering.

Lady Varvara was caucasoid
herself, though the Chinese strain
in the Ayres pedigree showed in
dark hair and small-boned body.
She posed, exquisite in a simple
white mourning gown, beside a
full-length stereo of her late hus-
band. Hurri Chundra Bannerji
had been a little brown middle-
aged Terran with wistful eyes:
doubtless the typical fussy, rule-
bound, conscientious civil servant
whose dreams of a knighthood die
slowly over the decades. And now
he was murdered.

Flandry bowed over Lady Var-
vara’s frail hand. “Your Ladyship,”
he said, “accept my most heartfelt
sympathy, and grant me forgive-

104

VENTURE SCIENCE ITCTION

ness that 1 must intrude at a mo-
ment of such loss.”

“1 am glad you came,” she whis-
pered. “So very glad.”

Jt had a shaken sincerity that
almost upset Flandry’s court man-
ners. He backed off with another
ritual bow^ ‘‘You must not trouble
)ourself further, your Ladyship.
Let me deal with the authorities.”
“Authorities!” The word was a
bitter explosion among her few
thin pieces of Tcrran crystal. Oth-
erwise the room was dominated
by the conch-whorls of an art that
had not seen Earth in centuries.
“What authorities? Did you bring
a regiment with you?"

“No.” Flandry glanced around
the long low-ccilinged room. A
noiseless City-bred butler had just
placed decanter and glasses by the
trellis-wall which opened on the
garden. When he left, there did
not seem to be anyone else in ear-
shot. Flandry took out his cigarets
and raised his brows inquiringly
at the wmman. He saw she was
younger than himself.

Her colorless lips bent into a
smile. “Thank you,” she said, so
low he could almost not hear it.

“Eh? For what, your Ladyship?
I’m afraid it’s a frosty comfort to
have me here.”

“Oh, no,” she said. She moved
closer. Her reactions were not
wholly natural: too calm and
frank for a new-made widow,
then suddenly and briefly too wild.
A heavy do.se of mysticine, he

guessed. It was quite the thing
for upper-class Imperials to erect
chemical walls against grief or
fear or — What do you do when
the walls come down? he thought.

“Oh, no,” repeated Lady Var-
vara. Her words flowed quick and
high-pitched. “Perhaps you do not
understand, Captain. You are the
first Terran I have seen, besides
my husband, for . . . how long?
Something like three Nyanzan
years, and that’s about four Ter-
ran. And then it was just a red-
faced military legate making a
routine check. Otherwise, who did
we see? The City Warden and his
officers paid a few courtesy calls
every year. The sea chiefs had to
visit us too when they happened
to be on Altla . . . not for our
sake, you understand, not to curry
favor, only because it was beneath
their dignity not to observe the
formalities. Their dignity!” Her
cheeks flamed. She stood close to
him now-, glaring upward; her
fists drew the skin tight over bird-
like knuckles. “As you would feel
obliged to notice the existence of
an unwelcome guest!”

“So the Empire is not popular
here?” murmured Flandry.

“I don’t know,” she said pal-
lidly, relaxing. “I don’t know. All
I know is — the only people we
ever saw, with any regularity —
our only friends, God help us,
friends! — were the Lubbers.”
“The w'hat, my lady?”

“City people. Technicians.

105

The Game of Glory

Pinkskins. Whatever you want to
call them. Like that fat little von
Sonderburg.” She was shrill again.
“Do you know what it’s like, Cai>
tain, to associate with no one but
an inferior class? It rubs off on
you. Your soul gets greasy. Von
Sonderburg now . . . always
toadying up to Hurri Chnndra
... he would never light a cigar
in iny presence without asking
me, in the most heavy waj — ex-
actly the same words, I have heard
them a million times, till I coidd
scream — ‘Does my lady object if I
have a little smoke?’ ’’

Varvara whirled from him.
Her bare shoulders shuddered.
“Does my lady object? D(x?s my
lady object? And then you come.
Captain — your lungs still full of
Earth air, I swear — you come and
take out a cigaret case and raise
your eyebrows. Like that. No
more. A gesture we all used at
Home, a ritual, an assumption
that I have eyes to sec what you’re
doing and intelligence to know
what you want — Oh, be welcome.
Captain Flandr)', he welcome!’’
She gripped the trellis with both
hands and stared out into the gar-
den. "You’re from Terra,” she
whispered. “I’ll come to you to-
night, any time, right now if you
want, just to repay you for being a
Terran.”

Flandry tapped a cigaret on his
thumbnail, put it to his lips at
half mast, and drew deeply. He
glanced at the sad brown eyes of

Hurri Chundra Bannerji and said
without words: Sorry, old chap.
I’m not a ghoul, and I'll do what 1
can to avoid this, but rny job de-
mands I be tactful. For the Em-
pire and the Race!

"I’m sorry to intrude when
you’re overwrought, your Lady-
ship,” he said. "Of course. I’ll ar-
range for your passage to provin-
cial headquarters, and if you want
to return Flome from there — ”
"After all these years,” she
mumbled, “who would I know?”
“Uh . . . may I suggest, my
lady, that you rest for a while — ?”
An intercom chime saved both
of them. Varvara said a shaky
"Accept” and the connection
closed. The butler’s voice came;
“Beg pardon, madame, but I have
just received word of a distin-
guished native person who has ar-
rived. Shall I ask postponement
of the formal visit?”

"Oh ... I don’t know.” Var-
vara’s tone was dead. She did not
look at Flandry. “Who is it?”

“Lady Tessa Hoorn, madame,
Lightmistress of Little Skua in
Jairnovaunt.”

Ill

W,hen tliey reached the Zurian
Current, the water, which had
been a Homeric blue, turned deep
purple, streaked with foam that
flashed like crystallized snow.
“This bends to north beyond Iron
Shoals and carries on past the

106

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

Reefs of Sorrow,” remarked Tessa
floorn. ‘‘Gains us a few knots
speed. Though we’ve naught to
hurry for, have we?”

riandry blinked through dark
contact lenses at the incredible
horizon. Sunlight fllmmercd olf
the multitudinous laughter of
small waves. ‘‘I suppose the color
is due to plankton,” he said.

‘‘Plankton-like organisms,” cor-
rected Tessa. ‘‘We’re nay on
Eardi, Captain. But aye, off this
feed the oilfish, and off’ them the
decapus, both of use to us.” She
pointed. ‘‘Yonder flags bear Dilolo
stripes, quartered on Saleth green :
the fishing boats of the Prince of
Aquant.”

Flandry’s dazzled eyes could
hardly even see the vessels, in that
merciless illumination. Since the
wind dropped, the Hoorn ship
had been running on its auxiliary
engine and now there was no
shade from the great sails. An
awning was spread amidships and
some superbly muscled deckhands
sprawled under it, clapping time
to an eerie chant-piiie, like young
gods carved in oiled ebony. The
Terran would have given much for
some of that shadow. But since
Tessa Hoorn stood here in the
bows, he must submit. It was an
endurance contest, he recognized,
with all the advantages on her
side.

‘‘Does your nation fish this cur-
rent too?” he asked.

‘‘A little,” she nodded. ‘‘But

mostly we in Jairnovaunt sail west
and north, with harpoons for the
kraken — ha, it’s a pale life never
to have speared fast to a beast
w'ith more of bulk than your own
ship! — and smaller game. Then
T’chaka Kruger farms a great
patch of beanweed in the Lesser
Sargasso. And in sooth I confess,
not alone tlie commons but some
captains born will scrape the low-
tide reefs for shells or dive after
sporj'x. Then there are carpen-
ters, w'cavers, engineers, medics,
machinists, all trades that must be
plied: and mummers and mimes,
though most such sport is given
by wandering boats of actors, mas-
terless madcap folk who come
by as fancy strikes ’em.” She
shrugged broad shoulders. ‘‘The
Commander can list you all pro-
fessions in his realm if you wish
it. Imperial.”

Flandry regarded her with more
care than pleasure. He had not
yet undei-stood her attitude. Was
it contempt, or merely hatred?

The sea people of Nyanza w’ere
almost entirely Afriean by de-
scent, w'hich meant that perhaps
three-fourtlis of their ancestors
had been negroid, back when
more or less “pure” stocks still
existed. In a world of light, more
actinic than anything on Earth,
reflected off water, there had been
a nearly absolute selection for
dark coloring: not a Nyanzen out-
side the city of Altla was any
whiter than the ace of spades.

107

The Game of Glory

Otherwise genes swapped around
pretty freely — kinky hair, broad
noses, and full lips were the rule,
but with plenty of exeeptions.
Tessa’s hair formed a soft, tightly
curled coif around her ears; her
nostrils flared, in a wide arch-
browed face, but the bridge was
aquiline. Witliout her look of in-
bred haughtiness, it would have
been a wholly beautiful face. The
rest of her was even more stun-
ning, almost as tall as Flandry,
full-breasted, slim-waisted, and
muscled like a Siamese cat. She
wore merely a gold medallion of
rank on her forehead, a belt with
a knife, and the inevitable aqua-
lung on her back . . . which left
plenty on view to admire. But
even in plumes and gown and
rainbow cloak, she had been a
walking shout as she entered the
resident’s mansion.

Howci'er, tliought Dominic
Flandr}’, that word "stunnhig" can
be taken two ways. 1 am not about
to make a pass at the Lightmis-
tress of Little Skua.

He asked cautiously: "Where
are the Technicians from?’’

"Oh, those.’’ A faint sneer flick-
ered on her red mouth. "Well, see
you, the firstcomers here settled
on Altla, but dien as more folk
came in, space was lacking, so
they began to range the sea. That
proved so much better a life that
erelong few cared to work on land.
So sitlr the positions stood open,
ai-hai! — it swarmed in with dirt-

loving men and their shes. Most
came from Deutschw'clt, as it hap-
pened. When we had enough of
yon ilk, and knew they’d breed,
we closed the sluice, for they dare
nay work as sailors, they get skin
sicknesses, and Altla has little
room.”

"I should think they’d be pow-
erful on tire planet, what with the
essential refineries and — ”

“Nay, Captain. Altla and all
thereon is owned in common by
the true Nyanzan nations. The
Technicians are but hirelings.
Though in sooth, they’ve a sticky
way rvith money and larger bank
accounts than many a skipper.
That’s why we bar them from
owning ships.”

Flandry glanced down at him-
self. He had avoided the quasi-
uniform of the despised class and
had packed outfits of blouse,
slacks, zori, and sash for himself;
the winged cap sat on his head
bearing the sunburst of Empire.
But he could not evade the ob-
vious fact, that his own culture
was more Lubberly than pelagic.
And an Imperial agent w'as often
hated, but must not ever allow
himself to be despised. Hence
Flandry cocked a brow ^Sardonic
Expression 22-C, he thought) and
drawled :

"I see. You’re afraid that, being
more intelligent, they’d end up
owning every ship on the planet.”

He could not see if she flushed,
under the smooth black sweat-

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

108

gleaming skin, but her lips drew
back and one hand clapped to her
knife. He thought that the sea bot-
tom was no further away than a
signal to her crew. Finally she ex-
claimed, “Is it the new fashion on
Terra to insult a hostess? Well
you know it’s nay a matter of in-
born brain, but of skill. The Lub-
bers are reared from birth to han-
dle monies. But how many of ’em
can handle a rigging — or even
name the lines? Can you?”

Flandry’s unfairness had been
calculated. So was his refusal to
meet her reply squarely. “Well,”
he said, “the Empire tries to re-
spect local law and custom. Only
the most uncivilized practices are
not tolerated.”

It stung her, she bridled. Most
colonials were violently sensitive
to their isolation from the Galac-
tic mainstream. They did not see
that their own societies were not
backward on that account — were
often healthier — and tlie answer
to that lay buried somewhere in
the depths of human unreason-
ableness. But the fact could be
used.

Having angered her enough,
Flandry finished coldly: “And, of
course, the Empire cannot toler-
ate treasonable conspiracies.”

Tessa Hoorn answered him in a
strained voice, “Captain, there’s
nay conspiring here. Free-born
folk are honest with foemen, too.
It’s you who put on slyness. For
see you, I happened by Altla

homebound from The Kraal,
and visited yon mansion for cour-
toisie sake. When you asked pas-
sage to Jairnovaunt, I granted it,
sith such is nay refused among
ocean people. But well I knew
you fared with me, liefer than fly
the way in an hour or two, so you
could draw me out and spy on me.
And you’ve nay been frank as to
your reasons for guesting my
country.” Her deep tones became a
growl. “That’s Lubber ways! You’ll
nay get far ’long your mission,
speaking for a planet of Lubbers
and Lubberlovers!”

She drew her knife, looked at
it, and clashed it back into the
sheatlr. Down on die quarterdeck,
die crewmen stirred, a ripple of
panther bodies. It grew so quiet
that Flandry heard the steady
snore of the bow through mur-
murous waves, and the lap-lap on
die hull, and the creak of spars up
in the sky.

He leaned back against a blis-
tering bulwark and said with
care: “I’m going to Jairnovaunt
because a boy died holding my
hand. I want to find his par-
ents. . . .” He offered her a ciga-
ret, and helped himself when she
shook her head. “But I’m not go- <
ing just to extend my personal
sympathies. Imperial expense ac- i
counts are not quite that elastic. j
For that matter, while we’re being I
honest, I admit I’d hardly invite ;
Bubbles or Flutters to ni)’ own j
house." ]

109

The Game of Glory

He blew smoke; it was almost
invisible in the flooding light.
“Maybe you wouldn’t conspire be-
hind anyone’s back, m’ lady. Come
to think of it who wmdd conspire
in front of anyone’s face? But
somebody on Nyanza is hatching
a ver}- nast)' egg. That kid didn’t
sign up when the Imperial re-
cruiter stopped by for glory or
money: he enlisted to learn mod-
ern militechnics, with the idea of
turning them against the Empire.
And he died in trampled snow,
snijK'd l)y a local patriot he was
chasing. Who lured that young
fellow out to die, Lightmistress?
And who sneaked up a wall and
harpooned a harmless little lonely
bureaucrat in his sleep? Rather
more to the point, who sent that
murderer-by-stcalth, and why?
Really, this is a pretty slimy busi-
ness all around. I .should think
you’d appreciate my efforts to
clean it off your planet.”

Tessa bit her lip. At last, not
meeting his shielded gaze, she
said, “I’m nay wise of any such
plots, Captain. I won’t speak ’loud
’gainst your Empire — my thoughts
are my own, but it’s true we’ve nay
suffered much more than a resi-
dent and some taxes — ”

“Which were doid)tless higher
when every nation maintained its
own defenses,” said Flandry. “Yes,
we settle for a single man on
worlds like this. We’d actually
like to have more, because enough
police could smell out trouble bc'-

fore it’s grown too big, and could
stop the grosser barbarities left
over from independent days — ”

Again she bristled. He said in a
hurry: “No, please, for once that’s
not meant to irritate. By and
large, Nyanza looks as if it’s al-
ways been quite a humane place.
If you don’t use all the latest
technological gimcrackery, it’s be-
cause it’s non-functional in this
culture, not because you’ve for-
gotten w'hat your ancestors knew'.
I’m just enough of a jackleg engi-
neer to see that these weird-look-
ing sails of yours are aerodynamic
marvels; I’m certain that para-
boloidal jib uses the Venturi ef-
fect with malice aforethought.
Your language is grammatically
archaic but semantically efficient.
I can envision some of the bucolic
poets at court going into raptures
over your way of life. And getting
seasick if they tried it, but that’s
another story. . . . Therefore,”
he finished soberly, “I’m afraid
I’m a little more sympathetic to
Hurri Chundra Banncrji, w'ho
fussed about and established ex-
trasystemic employment contacts
for your more ambitious young
men and built breakwaters and or-
dered vaccines and was never ad-
mitted to your clubs, than I am
sorry for you.”

She looked over the side, into
curling white and purple w’ater,
and said very low, “The Empire
was nay asked here.”

"Neither w'as anyone else.. The

110

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

Terran Empire established itself
in this region first. The Merseian
Empire would be a rather more
demanding master — if only be-
cause it’s still vigorous, expansive,
virtuous, and generally uncor-
rupted, while Terra is the easy-
going opposite.” That brought her
up shai^ply in astonishment, as he
had expected. “Since the Empire
must protect its frontiers, lest
Terra herself be clobbered out of
the sky, we’re going to stay. It
would not be advisable for some
young Nyanzan firebrains to try
harpooning space dreadnaughts.
Anyone who provokes such gal-
lant idiocy is an enemy of yours
as well as mine.”

Her eyes were moody upon his.
After a long time she asked him,
“Captain, hav'e you ever swum
undersea?”

“I’ve done a little skindiving
for fun,” he said, taken aback. He
had spoken half honestly and half
meretriciously, never quite sure
which sentence was one or an-
other, and thought he had touched
the proper keys. But this surprised
him.

“Nay more? And you stand all
'lone on a world that’s aloof of
you where it doesn’t, perchance,
scheme murder? Captain, I re-
pent me what I said ’bout your
folk being Lubbers.”

The relief was like a wave of
weakness. Flandry sucked in his
cheeks around his cigaret and an-
swered lightly: “They cannot do

worse than shoot me, which W'ould
distress only my tailor and my
vintner. Have you ever heard that
the coward dies a tliousand deaths,
the hero dies but once?”

“Aye.”

“Well, after the 857th death I
got bored with it.”

She laughed and he continued
a line of banter, so habitual by
now tliat most of him tliought on
other affairs. Not that he seriously
expected the Lightmistress of Lit-
tle Skua to become bodily accessi-
ble to him; he had gathered an
impression of a chaste folk. But
the sev'eral days’ voyage to Jair-
nov^aunt could be made very pleas-
ant by a small shipboard flirta-
tion, and he would learn a great
deal more than if his fellow voy-
agers were hostile. For instance,
whether the imported wine he had
noticed in the galley was prefera-
ble to native seaberry gin. He had
not been truthful in claiming in-
difference whether he lived or
died: not while a supple young
woman stood clad in sunlight,
and blooded horses stamped on
the ringing plains of Ilion, and
smoke curled fragrant about coffee
and cognac on Terra. But half
the pleasure came from these
things being staked against dark-
ness.

A tide was flowing when they
reached Jairnovaunt, and all the

Ill

The Game of Glory

rocks, and the housings upon
them, were meters under the sur-
face. The Hoorn ship steered a
way between pennant-gay buoys
to one of the anchored floating
docks. There swarmed the sea peo-
ple, snorting like porpoises among
moored hulls or up like stiuirrels
in tall masts. Fish were being un-
loaded and sails repaired and en-
gines overhauled, somewhere a
flute and a drum underlay a hun-
dred deep voices chanting Way-o
as bare feet stamped out a riga-
doon. Flandry noticed how silence
spread ripple-fashion from the
sight of him. But he followed
Tessa overboard as soon as her
vessel was secured.

No Nyanzan was ever far from
his aqualung. They seemed to
have developed a more advanced
model here than any Flandry
had seen elsewhere: a transparent
helmet and a small capacitance-
battery device worn on the back,
which electrolyzed oxygen directly
from the water and added enough
helium from a high-compression
tank to dilute. By regulating the
partial pressures of the gases, one
could go quite deep.

This was only a short swim, as
casual as a Terran’s stroll across
the bridgeway. Slanting through
clear greenish coolth, I'landry
saw that Jairnovaunt was large —
sunken domes and towers gleamed
farther than his \ision reached.
W'ork went on : a cargo subma-
rine, with a score of human

midges flitting about it, dis-
charged kelpite bales into a ware-
house tube. But there were also
children darting among the eerie
spires and grottos of a coraloid
park, an old man scattered seeds
for a school of brilliant-striped
little fish, a boy and a girl swam
hand in hand through voiceless
wonder.

When he reached the long
white hall of the Commander,
Jairnovaunt’s hereditary chief
executive, Flandry was still so be-
mused by the waving, fronded for-
mal gardens that he scarcely no-
ticed how graceful the portico
was. Even the airlock which ad-
mitted him blended into the over-
all pattern, a curiously disturbing
one to the Terran mind, for it con-
trasted delicate traceries and bru-
tal masses as if it were the ocean
itself.

When tlie ^vater had been
pumped out, an airblast dried
them, Flandry ’s shimmerite clothes
as well as Tessa’s sleek skin. They
stepped into a hallway muralecl
with heroic abstractions. Beyond
two guards bearing Uie ubiquitous
harpoon rifles, and beyond an
emergency bulkhead, the passage
opened on a great circular cham-
ber lined with malachite pillars
under a clear dome. Some tvvo-
score Nyanzans stood about. Their
ages seemed to range upward
from 20 or so; some wore only a
’lung, others a light colored shirt
and kilt; all bore dignity like a

112

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

mantle. Quite a few were women,
gowned and plumed if they were
clothed at all, but otherwise as
free and proud as their men.

Tessa stepped forward and sa-
luted crisply. “The Lightmistrcss
of Little Skua, returning from The
Kraal as ordered, sir.”

Commander Inyanduina III
was a powerfully built, heavy-
faced man with graying woolly
hair: his medallion of rank was
tattooed, a golden Pole Star bright
on his brows. “Be welcome,” he
said, “and likewise your guest. He
is now ours. I call his name holy.”

The Terran flourished a bow.
“An honor, sir. I am Captain
Dominic Flandry, Imperial Navy.
Lightmistrcss Hoorn was gracious
enough to conduct me here.”

He met the Commander’s eyes
steadily, but placed himself so he
could watch Tessa on his edge of
vision. Inyanduma tipped an al-
most iinpercejitible inquiring ges-
ture toward her. She nodded, ever
so faintly, and made a short-lived
O with thumb and forefinger. I’d
already wormed out that she went
to The Kraal on official business,
remembered Flandry, but she
wouldn't say what and only now
will she even admit it succeeded.
Too secret to mention on her
ship’s radiophone! As human be-
ings, we enjoyed each other’s com-
pany, traveling here. But as agents
of our kings — ?

Inyanduma swept a sailor’s
muscular hand about the room.

“You see our legislative leaders,
Captain. When the Lightmistrcss
’phoned you were hither-bound,
we supposed it was because of his
Excellency’s slaying, which had
been broadcast ’round the globe.
It’s a grave matter, so I gathered
our chiefs of council, from both
the House of Men and the Con-
gress of Women.”

A rustling and murmuring
went about the green columns,
under the green sea. There was
withdrawal in it, and a sullen
waiting. These were not profes-
sional politicians as Terra knew
tlie breed. These were tlie worth-
ies of Jairnovaunt: aristocrats

and shijxiwners, holding seats ex
officio, and a proportion of
ships’ officers elected by Uie com-
mons. Even the nobles were
functional — Tessa Hoorn had
inherited not the right but the
duty to maintain lightships and
communications about the reefs
called Little Skua. They had all
faced more storms and under-
water teeth than they had debate.

Flandry said evenly; “My visit
concerns worse than a murder,
sir and gentles. A resident might
be killed by any disgruntled indi-
vidual, that’s an occupational
hazard. But I don’t think one liv-
ing soul hated Bannerji person-
ally. And that’s what’s damn-
able!”

“Are you implying treason,
sir?” rumbled Inyanduma.

“I am, sir. With more lines of

113

The Game of Glory

evidence than one. Could anybody
direct me to a family named
Umbolu?”

It stirred and hissed aimmg the
councillors of Jairnovaunt. And
then a young man trtxl forth — a
huge young man with a lion’s
gait, cragged features and a scar
on one cheek. “Aye,” he said so
it rang in tlie hall. "I bight Derek
Umbolu, captain of the kraken-
chaser Bloemfontein. Te'ssa, why
brought you a damnt^d Impy
hither?”

“Belay!" rapped Inyanduma.
“We’ll show courtoisie here.”

Tessa exclaimed to the giant;
“Derek, Derek, he could have
flown to us in an hour! And we
meditate nay rebellion — ” Her
voice trailed o£E; she stepped back
from his smoldering gaze, her own
eyes widening and a hand stixil-
ing to her moutli. The unspoken
question shivered, Do ii'c?

‘TjCt ’em keep ’way from us!"
growled Derek Umlxilu. "We’ll
pay the tribute and hold to the
bloody Pax if they’ll leave us
and our old ways ’lone. But thev
don’t!"

Flandry stepped into collective
horror. “I’m not offended,” he
said. “But neither do I make
policy. Your complaints against
the local administration should be
taken to the provincial gover-
nor — ”

‘Ton murdering quog!" spttt
Derek. ‘Tve heard about Brae,
and more.”

Since Flandry considered the
description admirable (he as-
sumed a quog was not a nice
animal) he said hastily: “I must
warn you against Use majesti.
And now let’s get to my task. It’s
not very’ pleasant for me either.
Captain Umbolu, are you related
to an Imperial marine named
Thomas?”

“Aye. I’ve a younger brother
who ’listed for a live-year hitch.”

Flandry’s tones gentled. “I’m
sorry. It didn’t strike me you
might be so closely — Thomas
Umbolu was killed in action on
Brae.”

Derek closed his eyes. One
great hand clamped on tlie hilt
of his sheath knife till blood
trickled from beneath the nails.
He looked again at the world and
said thickly: “You came here
swifter than the official news,
Captain.”

“I saw him die,” said Flandry.
“He went like a brave man.”

“You’ve nay crossed space just
to tell a colonial that much.”

“No,” said Flandry. “I would
like to speak alone with you some-
time soon. And with his other
kin.”

The broad black chest pumped
air, the hard fingers curved into
stiff claws. Derek Umlx>lu rasped
forth: “You’ll nay torment my fa-
ther with your devilments, nor
throw shame on us with your se-
crecy. Ask it out here, ’fore ’em
all.”

114

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

Flandry’s shoulder muscles
tightened, as if expecting a bullet.
He looked to the Commander. In-
yanduma’s starred face was like
obsidian. Flandrj' said: “I have
reason to believe Thomas Umbolu
was implicated in a treasonable
conspiracy. Of course, I could be
wrong, in which case I’ll apolo-
gize. But I must first put a great
many questions. I am certainly
not going to perform before an
audience. I’ll see you later.”

“You’ll leave my father be or
I’U kill you!”

“Belay!’ cried Inyanduma. “I
said he was a guest.” More softly:
“Go, Derek, and tell Old John
what you must.”

The giant saluted, wheeled,
and stalked from the room. Flan-
dry saw tears glimmer in Tessa’s
eyes. The Commander bowed
ponderously at him. “Crave your
pardon, sir. He’s a stout heart
. . . surely you’ll find nay trea-
son in his folk . . . but the news
you bore was harsh.”

Flandry made some reply. The
gathering became decorous, tlie
Lightmasters and Coastwatchers
offered him polite conversation.
He felt reasonably sure that few
of them knew about any plottings :
revolutions didn’t start that way.

Eventually he found himself in
a small but tastefully furnished
bedroom. One wall was a plane-
tary map. He studied it, looking
for a place called Uhunhu. He
found it near the Sheikhdom of

Rossala, which lay north of here;
if he read the symbols aright, it
was a permanently submerged
area.

A memory snapped into his
consciousness. He swore for two
unrepeating minutes before start-
ing a chain of cigarets. If that
was the answer —

The inner moon, tliough small-
er, raised the largest tides, up to
nine times a Terrestrial high; but
it moved so fast, five orbits in
two of Nyanza’s 30-hour days,
that the ebb was spectacularly
rapid. Flandry heard a roar
through his wall, switched on die
transparency, and saw water tum-
bling white from dark rough rock.
It was close to sunset, he had sat
in his thoughts for hours. A
glance at the electric ephemerides
over his bunk told him that Loa,
the outer satellite, would not
dunk the hall till midnight. And
that was a much weaker flow,
without the whirlpool effects
which were dangerous for a low-
er-case lubber like himself.

He stubbed out his cigaret and
sighed. Might as well get the nasty
part over ivith. Rising, he shucked
all clothes but a pair of trunks
and a ’lung; he put on the swim-
shoes given him and buckled his
guns — diey were safely water-
proof — into dieir holsters. A di-
rectory-map of the immediate re-

115

The Game of Glory

gion showed him where Captain
John Umbolu lived. He recorded
a message that business called him
out and his host should not wait
dinner: he felt sure Inyanduma
would be more relieved than of-
fended. Then he stepped through
the airlock. It closed automati-
cally after him.

Sunset blazed across violet wa-
ters. The white spume of the
breakers was turned an incredi-
ble gold; tide pools on the naked
black skerry were like molten
copper. The sky was deep blue in
the east, still pale overhead,
shading to a clear cloudless green
where the sun drowned. Through
the surf’s huge hollow crashing
and grinding, Flandry heard bells
from one of the many rose-red
spires ... or did a ship’s bell
ring among raking spars, or was
it something he had heard in a
dream once? Beneath all the
noise, it was unutterably peaceful.

No one bothered with boats for
such short distances. I'landry en-
tered the water at a sheltered spot,
unfolded the web feet in his
shoes, and struck out between the
scattered, dome-and-towered reefs.
Other heads bobbed in the little
warm waves, but none paid him
attention. He was glad of that.
Steering a course by marked buoys,
he found old Umbolu’s house af-
ter a few energetic minutes.

It was on a long thin rock, sur-
rounded by lesser stones on which
a murderous fury explotled. The

Terran paddled carefully around,
in scarcli of a safe approach. He
found it, two natural breakwaters
formed by gaunt rusty coraloid
pinnacles, with a patli that led
upward through gardens now sod-
den heaps until it struck the little
hemisphere. Twihght was closing
in, slow and deeply blue; an eve-
ning planet came to white life in
tlie west.

Flandry stepped onto the beach
under the crags. It was dark there.
He did not know what reflex of
deadly years saved him. A man
glided from behind one of the
high spires and fired a harpoon.
Flandry dropped on his stomach
lx;fore he had seen more than a
metallic glitter. The killing mis-
sile hissed where he had been.

“If you please!” He rolled over,
yanking for his sleepy-needle gun.
A night-black panther shape
sprang toward him. His pistol was
only half unlimbered when the
hard body fell upon his. One chop-
ping, wrist-numbing karate blow
sent the weapon a-clatter from his
grasp. He saw a bearded, hating
face behind a knife.

Flandry blocked the stab with
his left arm. The assassin pulled
his blade back. Before it could re-
turn, Flandry’s thumb went after
the nearest eye. His opponent
should have ignored that distrac-
tion for tire few necessary mo-
ments of slicing time — but, in-
stead, grabbed the Terran’s wrist
with liis own free hand. Flan-

116

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

dry’s right hand was still weak,
but he delivered a rabbit punch of
sorts with it and took his left out
of hock hy jerking past his en-
emy's thumb. Laying both hands
ami a knee against the man’s knife
arm, he set about breaking same.

The fellow screechetl, writhed,
and wriggled free somehow. Both
bounced to their feet. The dagger
lay between them. The Nyanzan
dove after it. Flandry put his foot
on the blade. “Finders keepers,”
he said. He kicked the scrabbling
man behind the ear and drew his
blaster.

The Nyanzan did not stay
kicked, fluddlcd at Flandry’s
knees, he threw a sudden shoulder
block. Tlie Terran went over on
his backside. He glimpsed the lean
form as it rose and leaped; it was
in the water before he had fired.

After the thunder-crash had
echoed to naught and no body
had emerged, Flandry retrieved
his needier. Slowly, his breathing
and pulse eased. “That,” he con-
fessed aloud, “w'as as ludicrous a
case of mutual ineptitude as the
gods of slapstick ever engineered.
We both deserve to be tickled to
death by small green centipedes.
Well ... if you keep quiet
about it, I will.”

He squinted through the dusk
at die assassin’s knife. It was an
ordinary rustproof blade, but the
lione hilt carried an unfamiliar
inlaid design. And had he ever
before seen a Nyanzan ivith a

respectable growth of beard?

Fie went on up the path and
pressed the house bell. The air-
lock opened for him and he en-
tered.

The place had a ship’s neat-
ness, and it w'as full of models,
scrimshaw, stuffed fish, all the
sailor souvenirs. But emptiness
housed in it. One old man sat
alone with his dead; there was
no one else.

John Umbolu looked up
through dim eyes and nodded.
“Aye,” he said. “I ’waited you.
Captain. Be welcome and be
seated.”

Flandry lowered himself to a
couch covered with the soft-scaled
hide of some giant swimming
thing John Umbolu had once
hunted down. The leather was
worn shabby. The old man limped
to him with a decanter of im-
ported rum. When tliey had both
been heljied, he sat himself in a
massive armchair and their gob-
lets clinked together. “Your honor
and good health, sir,” said John
Umbolu.

Flandry looked into the wrin-
kled face and said quietly: “Your
son Derek must have told you my
news.”

“I’ve had the tidings,” nodded
Umbolu. He took a pipe from its
rack and began to fill it with slow
careful motions. “You saw him
die, sir?”

“Fie held my hand. Flis squad
W'as ambushed on a combat mis-

117

The Game of Glory

sion on Brae. He . . . it was
soon over.”

“Drowning is the single decent
death,” whispered the Nyanzan.
“My other children, all but Derek,
had that much luck.” He lit his
pipe and blew smoke for a while.
“I’m sorry Tom had to go yon
way. But it is kind of you to come
tell me of it.”

“He’ll be buried with full mili-
tary honors,” said Flandry awk-
wardly. If they don’t hare so many
corpses they just hiilldozc them
under. “Or if you wish, instead of
the battle-casualty bonus you can
have his ashes returned here.”
“Nay,” said Uml)olu. His white
head wove back and forth. “What
use is that? Let me have the
money, to build a reef beacon in
his name.” He thought for a wliile
longer, then said timidly: "Per-
chance I could call further on
your kindness. Would you know if
. . . you’re ’ware, sir, soldiers on
leave and the girls they meet . . .
it’s possible Tom left it chilil
somewhere ...”

“I’m sorry, I wouldn’t know
how to find out about that."

“Well, well, I c.xpeeteil nay
more. Derek must be wed soon
then, if the name’s to live.”

Flandry drew hard on a cigaret,
taken from a waterproof case, i le
got out: “I have to tell you what
y'our son said as he lay dying."

“Aye. Say forth, and fear me
nay. Shall the fish blame the hook
if it hurts him a little?"

Flandry related it. At tlie end,
the old man’s eyes closed, just as
Derek’s had done, and he let the
empty glass slip from his fingers.

Finally: “I know naught of this.
Will 3'ou believe that. Captain?”
“Yes, sir,” Flandry answered.

“You fear Derek may be caught
in the same net?”

“I hope not.”

"I too. I’d nay have any son of
mine in a scheme that works by
midnight murder — whatever they
may think of your Empire. Tom
. . . Tom was young and didn’t
understand what was involved.
Will you believe that too?” asked
John Umbolu anxiously. Flandry
nodded. The Nyanzan dropped
his head and cupped his hands
about the pipe bowl, as if for
warmth. "But Derek . . . why,
Derek’s in the Council. Derek
vvoidd have open eyes — Let it
nay be so!”

Flandry left him with himself
for a time, then : “Where might
any young man . . . first have
encountered the agents of such a
conspiracy?”

“Who knows, sir? ’Fore his ;
growth is gained, an Lfmbolu boy
has shinned to all ports of the
planet. Or there are always sailors
from every nation on Nyanza,
right here in Jairnovaunt.”

Flandry held out the knife he
had taken. “This belongs to a
bearded man,” he said. “Can you
tell me anything about it?”

The faded eyes peered close.

118

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

“Rossala work.” It was an instant
recognition, spoken in a lifeless
voice. "And the Rossala men
flaunt whiskers.”

“As I came ashore here,” said
Flandr}', “a bearded person with
this knife tried to kill me. He got
away, but — ”

He stopped. The old sea cap-
tain had risen. Flandry looked
up at an incandescent mask of
rage, and suddenly he realized
that John Umbolu was a very big
man.

Gigantic fists clenched over the
Terran’s head. The huge voice
roared like thunder, one majestic
oath after the next, until rage at
last found meaningful words.
“Sneak assassins on my very
ground! ’Gainst my guest! By the
blazing bones of Almighty God,
sir, you’ll let me question every
Rossalan in Jairnovaunt and flay
yon one ’live!”

Flandry rose too. An upsurging
eagerness tingled in him, a new-
born plot. And at the same time —
Warily, child, warily! You’ll not
get cooperation at this counter
without some of the most weasel-
like arguments and shameless
emotional hutton-pushing in hell’s
three-volume thesaurus.

Well, he thought, that’s what I
get paid for.

Hours had gone when he left
the house. Fie had eaten there, but

sheer weariness dragged at him.
He swam quite slowly back to the
Commander’s rock. When he stood
on it, he rested for a w'hile, look-
ing over the sea.

Loa was up, Luna-sized, nearly
full, but w'ith several times the
albedo of Earth’s moon. High in a
clear blackness, it drowned most
of the alien constellations. The
marker lights about every rock,
color-coded for depth so tliat all
Jairnovaunt was one great jewel-
box, grew" pallid in the moon-
dazzle off the ocean.

Flandry took out a cigaret. It
w'as enough to be alone with that
light: at least, it helped. Imperial
agents ought to have some kind
of conscience-ectomy performed.

. . . He drew smoke into his
lungs.

"Can you nay rest. Captain?”

The low' w'oman-voice brought
him bounding around. When he
saw the moonlight gleam off Tessa
Hoorn, he put back his gun,
sheepishly.

“You seem a wee bit wakeful
yourself,” he answered. "Unless
you are sleep-w'alking, or sleep-
diving or w'hatei'er people do here.
But no, surely I am the one asleep.
Don’t rouse me.”

The moon turned her into
darknesses and lithe witcheries,
W'ith great marching w'aters to
sw'irl beneath her feet. She had
been swimming — Loa glistened
off a million cool drops, her only
garment. He remembered how

119

The Game of Glory

tliey had talked and laughed and
traded songs and recollections arid
even hopes, under tall skies or
moonlit sails. His heart stumbled,
and glibness died.

“Aye. My net would nay hold
fast to sleep this night.” She stood
before him, eyes lowered. It was
the first time she had not met his
gaze. In the streaming unreal
light, he saw how a pulse llultered
in her throat. “So I wended I’rom
my bunk and — ” The tones faded.

“Why did you come here again?”
he asked.

“Oh ... it was a place to
steer for. Or jx;rchance. . . .
Nay!” Her lips tided to smile, hut
were not quite steady. “Wdicre
were you this evening, sith we are
so curious?”

“I spoke to Old John,” he said,
because so far truth would serve
his purjiose. “It wasn’t easy.”

“Aye. I wouldn’t give your work
to an enemy, Dominic. Why <io
you do it?”

He shrugged. “It’s all I really
know how to do.”

“Nay!” she protested. “I'o aid
a brute of a governor or a null of
a resident — you’re too miieli a
man. You could come . . . here,
even — Nay, the sun vvoiildn’l al-
low it for long. . . .”

“It’s not quite for nothing,” he
said. “The Empire is — " he
grinned forlornly — “less perfect
than myself. True. Ikit what
would replace it is a great deal
worse.”

“Are you so sure, Dominic?”

“No,” he said in bitterness.

“You could dwell on a frontier
world and do work you are sure is
worth yourself. I . . . even I
have thought, there is more in this
universe than Nyanza ... if
such a planet had oceans, I could

Flandry said frantically:
“Didn’t you mention having a
child, Tessa?”

“Aye, a Commander-child, but
sith I’m unwed as yet the boy was
adopted out.” He looked his puz-
zlement and she explained, as
glad as he to be impersonal: “The
Commander must not wed, but
lies with whom he will. It’s a high
honor, and if she be husbandless
the woman gets a great dowry
from him. The offspring of these
unions are raised by the mothers’
kin; when they are all old
enough, the councillors elect the
best-seeming son heir apparent.”

Somewhere in his rocking
brain, Flandry thought that the
Tcrran Emperors could learn a
good deal from Nyanza. He
forced a chuckle and said: “Why,
that makes you the perfect catch,
Tessa — titled, rich, and the

mother of a potential chieftain.
How did you escape so far?”

“There was nay the right man,”
she whispered. “Inyanduma him-
•self is so much a man, see you,
for all his years. Only Derek Um-
bolu — how you unlock me, Ter-
ran! — and him too proud to wed

120

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

’bove his station.” She caught her
breath and blurted desperately:
“But I’m nay more a maid, and I
ivill nay wait until Full Entropy
to be again a woman.”

Flandry could have mumbled
something and gotten the devil
out of there. But he remembered
through a brawling in his blood
that he was an Imjierial agent
and that something had been done
by this girl in southern waters
which they kept secret from him.

He kissed her.

She responded shyly at first,
and then with a hunger that tore
at him. They sat for a long while
under the moon, needing no words,
until Flandry felt with dim sur-
prise that the tide was licking his
feet.

Tessa rose. “Come to my house,”
she said.

It was the moment when he
must be a reptile-blooded scoun-
drel ... or perhaps a parfait
gentil knight, he was desolately
uncertain w'hich. He remained
seated, looking up at her, where
she stood crowned with stars, and
said:

“I'm sorry. It wouldn’t do.”

“Fear me naught,” she said with
a small catch of laughter, very
close to a sob. “You can leave
when you will. I’d nay have a
man who wouldn’t stay freely.
But I’ll do my best to keep you,
Dominic, dearest.”

He fumbled after another cig-
aret. “Do you think I’d like any-

thing better?” he said. “But there’s
a monster loose on this planet. I’m
all but sure of it. I ivill not give
you just a few hours with half
my mind on my work. Afterward
— ” He left it unfinished.

She stood quiet for a time that
stretched.

“It’s for Nyanza too,” he plead-
ed. “If this goes on unreined, it
could be the end of your people.”
“Aye,” she said in a flat tone.
“You could help me. When this
mission is finished — ”

“Well . . . what would you
know?” She twisted her face
away from his eyes.

He got the cigaret lighted and
squinted tlirough the smoke.
“What were you doing in The
Kraal?”

“I’m nay so sure now that I do
love you, Dominic.”

“VVill you tell me, so I’ll know
what I have to face?”

She sighed. “Rossala is arming.
They are making warcraft, guns,
torpedoes — none nuclear, sitli we
have nay facilities for it, but more
than tlie Terran law allows us. I
don’t know why, though rumor
speaks of sunken Uhunhu. The
Sheikh guards his secrets. But
there are wdiispers of freedom. It
may or may not be sooth. We’ll
nay make trouble with the Im-
perium for fellow Nyanzans, but
. . . we arm ourselv es too, in case
Rossala should start again the old
wars. I arranged an alliance with
The Kraal.”

121

The Game of Glory

“And if Rossala should not at-
tack you, but revolt against Ter-
ra?” asked Flandry. “What would
your own re-armed alliance do?”
“I know naught ’bout that. I
am but one Nyanzan. Have you
nay gained enough?”

she slammed down her ’lung
helmet and dove olf tlic edge. He
did not see her come up again.

vir

With a whole planet fu I of
exotic sea foods to choose from,
the Commander hospital)ly l>ieak-
fasted his guest on imported beef-
steak. Flandr)' walked out among
morning tide pools, through a
gusty salt wind, and waited in
grimness and disgruntlement for
events to start moving.

He was a conspicuous figure in
his iridescent white garments,
standing alone on a jut of rock
with the surf leaping at his feet.
A harpoon gunner could linve
fired upward from the water and
disappeared. Flandry did not take
his eyes off tlie blue and green
whitecaps beyond the breakers.
His mind dwelt glumly on I’essa
Hoorn . . . God damn it, he
would go home by way of Morvan
and spend a week in its pleasure
city and put it all on the expense
account. What was the use of this
struggle to keep a decaying civili-
zation from being eaten alive, if
you never got a chance at any of
the decadence yourself?

A black shape crossed his field
of vision. He jwised, warily. The
man swam like a seal, but straight
into the surf. There were sharp
rocks in that cauldron — hold it!
— Derek Umbolu beat his way
tlirough, grasped the wet stone
edge Flandry stood on, and
chinned himself up. He pushed
back his helmet with a crash audi-
ble over the sea-thunder and
loomed above Flandry like a basalt
cliff. Flis eyes went downward 30
centimeters to lock with the Ter-
ran’s, and he snarled:

"What have you done to her?”
“My lady Floorn?” Flandry
asked. “Unfortunately, nothing.”

A fist cocked. “You lie. Lubber!
I know the lass. I saw her this
dawn and she had been weep-
ing.”

Flandry smiled lop-sided. “And
I am necessarily to blame? Don’t
you flatter me a bit? She spoke
rather well of you. Captain.”

A shiver went through the huge
borly. Derek stepped back one
pace; teeth caught at his lip. “Say
nay more,” he muttered.

“Fd have come looking for you
today,” said Flandry. “We still
have a lot to talk about. Such as
the man who tried to kill me last
night.”

Derek spat. “A pity he didn’t
succeed!”

“Your father drought otherwise,
seeing the attempt was made on
his own rock. He was quite in-
dignant.”

122

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

Derek’s eyes narrowed. His
nostrils stirred, like an angry
bull’s, and his head slanted for-
ward. “So you spoke to my father
after all, did you, now? I warned
you, Impy — ’’

“We liad a friendly sort of
talk,’’ said Flandry. "He doesn’t be-
lieve anything can be gained by
shooting men in tlieir sleep.”

“I suppose all your own worlcs
would stand being refereed?"

Since they would certainly not,
Flandry donned a frowm and con-
tinued: "I'd keep an eye on your
father, though. I've seen these
dirty little fanaticisms before.
Among the first people to be
butchered are the native-born W’ho
keep enough native sense and
honor to treat the Imperial like a
fellow'-being. You see, such people
are too likely to understand that
the revolution is really organized
hy some rival imperialism, and
that you can’t win a war where
)-our own home is the battle-
ground.”

"Arrghl" A hoarse animal noise,
for no tvords were scornful
enough.

“And ray tvould-be assassin is
still in business,” continued Flan-
dry. “He knows I did talk to your
fatlicr. Hate me as much as you
like. Captain Umbolu, but keep a
guard over tlie old gentleman. Or
at least speak to a certain Rossalan
whom I don’t accuse you of
knowing.”

For a moment longer the brown

eyes blazed against the glacial
gray blandncss of the Terran’s.
Then Derek clashed his helmet
down and returned to tlie water.

Flandry sighc*d. He really
should start the formal machinery
of investigation, but — He went
back to the house with an idea of
borrowing some fishing tackle.

Inyanduma, seated at a desk
among the inevitable documents
of government, gave him a trou-
bled look. “Arc you certain that
there is a real conspiracy on Ny-
anza?” he asked. “We’ve ever had
our hotheads, like all others . . .
aye. I’ve seen otlier planets, I
’listed for die space Navy in my
day and hold a resenc commis-
sion.”

Flandry sat down and looked
at his fingernails. “Then why
haven’t you reported what you
know about Rossala?” he asked
softly.

Inyanduma started. “Are you a
telepath?”

“No. It’d make diings too dull.”
Flandry lit a fresh cigaret. “I know
Rossala is arming, and diat your
nation is alarmed enough about it
to prepare defensive w'eapons and
alliances. Since the Empire would
protect you, you must expect the
Empire to be kicked off Nyanza.”

“Nay,” w'hisjicred Inyanduma.
“We’ve nay certainty of aught.
It’s but . . . we w'on’t bring a
horde of deteedves, belike a Ter-
ran militar}- force, by denouncing
our fellow nation ... on so lit-

123

The Game of Glory

tie proof. . . . And yet wc must
keep some freedom of action, in
case — ”

"Especially in case Rossida calls
on you to join in cutting tJic Tcr-
ran apron strings?”

“Nay, nay—”

"Under other circumstances, it
would be pathetic.” Flandry shook
his tongue-clicking head. "It’s so
amateurishly done tliat I feel
grossly overpaid for my lime here.
But whoever engineered the con-
spiraey in the first place is no
amateur. He used your parochial
loyalties with skill. And he must
expect to move soon, before a pre-
occupied Impcrium can find out
enough about his arrangements to
justify sending in the marines. I he
resident’s assassination is obvi-
ously a key action. It was chance
I got here the very day that had
happened, but someone like me
would surely have arrived not
many days later, and not been a
great deal longer al)out le.-irning
as much as I’ve done. Of course, if
they can kill me it will ilelay mat-
ters for a while, which will he
helpful to tlicm; hut they don't
seem to expect they’ll neetl mucli
time.”

Flandry' paused, nodded to
himself, and carried on. "Frgo, if
this affair is not stopped, we can
expect Rossala to revolt within
a few weeks at the very latest. Bos-
sala will call on the other Nyan/an
nations to help — and they’ve Imcu
cleverly maneuvered into arming

themselves and setting up a skele-
ton military organization. If the
expert I suspect is behind the revo-
lution, those leaders such as y'our-
self, W'ho demur at the idea, will
die and be replaced by more gulli-
ble ones. Of course, Nyanza will
have been promised outside help;
I don’t imagine even Derek Um-
bolu thinks one planet can stand
off all Terra’s power. Merseia is
not too far away. If everything
goes smootlily, w'e’ll end up with a
nominally independent Nyanza
which is actually a Merseian pup-
pet — deep within Terran space. If
the attempt fails, w'ell, what’s one
more radioactive w'rcck of a world
to Merseia?”

There w'as a stillness.

In the end Inyanduma said
grayly: “I don’t know but W'hat
the hazard you speak of w'ill be
better than to call in the Terrans;
for in sooth all our nations have
broken your law in that we have
gathered weapons as you say. The
Imperials would nay leave us what
self-government we now have.”
“They might not be necessary,”
said Flandry. "Since you do have
those w’eapons, and the City con-
stabulary is a legally armed na-
tive force with some nuclear
equipment . . . you could do
your own housecleaning. I could
supervise the operation, make
sure it w'as thorough, stamp my
report to headquarters Fantasti-
cally Secret, and that would be
the close of the affair.”

124

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

He Stood up. "Think it over,”
he said. . . .

It was peaceful out on the
rock. Flandry’s reel hummed, the
lure flashed through brilliant air,
the surf kittened gigantically with
his hook. It did not seem to mat-
ter greatly that he got never a
nibble. The tide began to rise
again, he’d have to go inside or
exchange his rod for a trident

A kayak came over drowned
skerries like something alive. Derek
Umbolu brought it to Flandry’s
feet and looked up. His face was
sea-wet, which was merciful;
Flandry did not want to know
whether the giant was crying.

“Blood,” croaked Derek. “Blood,
and the chairs broken, I could see
in the blood how he was dragged
out and thrown to the fish.”

Hollowness lay in Dominic
Flandry’s heart. He felt his shoul-
ders slump. “I’m sorry,” he said.
"Oh, God, I’m sorry.”

\Vords ripped out, flat, hurried,
under the ramping tidal noise :
"They center in Rossala, but
someone in Uhunhu captains it. 1
was to seize control here when
they rise, if Inyanduma will nay
let us help the revolution. I hated
the killing of old Bannerji, but it
was needful. For now there will
be nay effective space traffic con-
trol, till they replace him, and in
two weeks there will come ships
from Merseia with heavy nuclear

war-weapons such as we can’t
make on this planet. The same
man who gaffed Bannerji tried for
you. He was the only trained as-
sassin in Jairnovaunt — and a
neighbor gave you alibi — so I be-
lieved none of his whinings that
he’d nay touched my father. Flis
name was Mamoud Shufi. Cursed
be it till the sun is cold clinkers!”

One great black hand unzipped
the kayak cover. The other hand
swooped down, pulled out some-
thing which dripped, and flung it
at the Terran’s feet so hard that
one dead eye burst from the
lopped-off head.

VIII

Elsewhere on Nyanza it
growled battle, men speared and
shot each other, ships w’ent to the
bottom and buildings cracked
open like rotten fruit. Where Flan-
dry' stood was only turquoise and |
lace. Perhaps some of the high ‘
white clouds banked in the west <
had a smoky tinge. 1

A crewman with a portable ']

sonic fathometer nodded. “We’re 1

over Uhunhu shoals now, sir.” i

"Stop die music,” said Flandry.
The skipper transmitted several ]

orders, he felt the pulse of engines
die, the submarine lay quiet. Look- ■
ing down gray decks past the
shark’s fin of a conning tower, i
Flandry saw crewmen gathering '
in a puzzled, almost resentful way. ;
They had expected to join the

125

The Game of Glory

fighting, till this Tcrran directed
tlic ship eastward.

“And now,” said Derek Umbolu
grimly, “will you have the kind-
ness to say why we steered clear
of Rossala?”

Flandr)' cocked an eyebrow.
“\\diy are you so anxious to kill
other men?” he countered.

Derek bristled. "I’m nay afraid
to hazard my skin, Impy . . .
like some I could name!”

“There’s more to it than that,”
said Flandry. He was not sure why
he prattled cheap psychology
when a monster crouched under
his feet. Postponing the moment?
He glanced at Tessa Hoorn, who
had insisted on coming. "Do you
see what I mean, Lightmistre.ss?
Do you kno%v why lie itches so to
loose his harpoon?”

Some of the chill she had shown
him in the past week thawed.
“Aye,” she said. “Belike I do. It’s
blood guilt enough that we’re
party to a war 'gainst our o^vn
planetmen, without being safe
into the bargain.”

He wondered how many shared
her feelings. Probably no large
number. After he and Inyanduma
flew to die City and got the
Warden to mohilize his constables,
a call had gone out for volunteers.
The Nyanzan public had only
been informed that a dangerous
conspiracy had been discovered,
centered in Rossala, that tlie
Sheikh had refused the police right
of entry, and that therefore a large

force would be needed to seize
that nation over the resistance of
its misguided citizens and occupy
it while the Warden’s specialists
sniffed out the actual plotters.
And men had come by the many
thousands, from all over the
planet.

It was worse, though, for those
who knew what really lay behind
this police operation.

Flandry mused aloud, “I won-
der if you’ll ever start feeling that
way about your fellowmen, wher-
ever they happen to live?”

“Enough!” rapped Derek Um-
bolu. "Say why you brought us
hither and be done!”

Flandry kindled a cigaret and
stared over the rail, into chuck-
ling sun-glittering waves so clear
that he could sec how the darkness
grew with every meter of depth.
He .said:

“Down there, if he hasn’t been
warned somehow that I know
about him, is the enemy.”

“Ai-a!” Tessa Hoorn dropped a
hand to her gun; but Flandry saw
with an odd little pain how she
moved all unthinkingly closer to
Derek. “But who would lair in
tlrowncd Uhunhu?”

"The name I know him by is
A’u,” said Flandry. “He isn’t hu-
man. He can breathe water as
well as air — I suppose his home
planet must he pretty %vet, though
I don’t know where it is. But it’s
somewhere in the Merseian Em-
pire, and he, like me, belongs to the

126

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

second oldest profession. We’ve
played games before now. I
flushed him on Conjumar two
Eartli-years ago: my boys cleaned
up his headquarters, and his per-
sonal spaceship took a near miss
that left it lame and radioactive.
But he got away. Not home, his
ship wasn’t in that good a condi-
tion, but away.”

Flandry trickled smoke sensu-
ously through his nostrils. It
might be the last time. “On the
basis of what I’ve seen here. I’m
now certain that friend A’u made
for Nyanza, ditched, contacted
some of your malcontents, and
started cooking revolution. The
whole business has his signature,
with flourishes. If nothing else, a
Nyanzan uprising and Merseian
intervention would get him pas-
sage home; and he might have
inflicted a major defeat on Terra
in the process.”

A mumbling went through the
crewfolk, wrath w'hich was half
terror. “Sic semper local patriots,”
finished Flandry. “I want to be
ruddy damn sure of getting A’u,
and he has a whole ocean bottom
to hide on if he’s alarmed, and
we’ll be too busy setting traps for
the Merseian gunrunners due
next week to play tag for very
long. Otherwise I’d certainly have
waited till we could bring a larger
force.”

“Thirty men ’gainst one poor
hunted creature?” scofEed Tessa.

“He’s a kind of big creature,”

said Flandry quietly to her.

He looked at his followers,
beautiful and black in the sun-
light, with a thousand hues of j
blue at their backs, a low little )
wind touching bare skins, and the ;
clean male shapes of weapons. j

It was too fair a world to gamble S
down in dead Uhunhu. Flandry j
knew with wry precision why he
was leading this chase — not for
courage, nor glory, nor even one
more exploit to embroider for some ;
high-prowed yellow-haired bit of
Terran fluff. He went because he
was an Imperial and if he stayed
behind the colonials would laugh
at him. '

Therefore he took one more
drag of smoke, flipped his cigaret i
parabolically overboard, and mur- j
mured: “Be good, Tessa, and I’ll
bring you back a lollipop. Let’s go,
chilluns.”

And snapped down his helmet
and dove cleanly over the side. i

The water became a world.
Overhead was an area of sun- !
dazzle, too bright to look on; else- ’
where lay cool dusk fading down-
ward into night. The submarine
was a basking whale shape ...
too bad he couldn’t just take it
down and torpedo A’u, but an ;
unpleasant session with a man i
arrested in Altla had told him !
better — A’u expected to be ap-
proached only by swimming men. ;

. . . The roof of sunlight grew
smaller as he drove himself toward ■
the bottom, until it was only a .

127

The Game of Glory

tiny blinding star and then noth-
ing. There was a silken sense of
his own steadily rippling muscles
and the sea that slid past them,
the growing chill stirred his blood
in its million channels, a glance
behind showed his bubble-stream
like a trail of tiny argent planets,
his followers were black lightning
bolts through an utterly quiet
green t^vilight, O God to be a seal!

Dimly now, the weed-grown
steeps of Uhunhu rose beneath
him, monstrous gray dolmens and
menhirs raised by no human
hands, sunken a million years ago
. . . A centuries-drowned ship,
the embryo of a new reef ten mil-
lennia hence, with a few skulls
strewn for fish to nest in, was
shockingly raw and new under
the leaning walls. Flandry passed
it in the silence of a dream.

He did not break that quietude,
though his helmet bore voice ap-
paratus. If A’u was still here,
A’li must not be alarmed by orders
to fan out in a search pattern.
Flandry soared close enough to
Derek to nod, and the giant
waved hands and feet in signals
understood by the men. Presently
Flandry and Derek were alone in
what might once have Ix-en a
street or perhaps a corridor.

They glided among toppling
enormities; now and then one of
denser shadow, but it was only a
rock or a decapus or a jawbone
the size of a portal. Flandry be-
gan to feel the cold, deeper than

his skin, almost deeper than the
silence.

A hand clamped bruisingly on
his wrist. He churned to a halt
and hung there, head cocked, un-
til the sound that Derek had dimly
caught was borne past vibrator
and ocean and receiver to his owm
ears. It was the screaming of a
man being killed, but so far and
faint it might have been the death
agony of a gnat.

Flandry blasphemed eighteen-
separate gods, kicked himself into
motion, and went like a hunting
eel through Uhunhu. But Derek
passed him and he was almost the
last man to reach the fight.

“A’u,” he said aloud, uselessly,
through the bawl of men and tire
roil of bloodied waters. He remem-
bered the harpoon rifle slung
across his shoulders, unlimbered
it, checked the magazme, and
wriggled close. Thirty men — no,
twenty-nine at the most — a corpse
bobbed past, wildly staring through
a helmet cracked open — twenty-
eight men swirled about one mon-
ster. Flandry did not want to hit
any of them.

He swam upward, until he
looked down on A’u. The great
black shape had torpedoed from
a dolmen. Fifteen meters long, the
wrinkled leather skin of some
Arctic golem, the gape of a whale
and the boneless arms of an ele-
phant . . . but witli hands, with
hands . . . A’u raged among his
hunters. Flandry saw how the legs

128

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION

which served him on land gripped
two men in the talons and plucked
their limbs off. There was no
sound made by tlie monster’s
throat, but the puny human jabber
was smashed by each flat concus-
sion of the flukes, as if bombs
burst.

Flandry nestled the rifle to his
shoulder and fired. Reeoil sent
him backward, end over end. He
did not know if his harpoon had
joined the seore in A’u’s tormented
flanks. It had to be this way, he
thought, explosives would kill the
men too under sea pressure and
. . . Blood spurted from a trans-
fixed huge hand. A’u got his back
against a monolith, arched his tail,
and shot toward the surface. Men
sprayed from him like bow water.

Flandry snapped his legs and
streaked to meet the thing. The
white belly turned toward him, a
cliff, a cloud, a dream. He fired
onee and saw his harpoon bite.
Once more! A’u bent double in
anguish, spoke blood, somehow
sensed the man and plunged at
him. Flandry looked down a cave
of horrible teeth. He looked into
the eyes behind; they were blind
with despair. He tried to scramble
aside. A’u changed course with a
snake’s ease. Flandry had a mo-
ment to wonder if A’u knew him
again.

A man flew from the blood-fog.
He fired a harpoon, holding him-
self steady against its back-thrust.
Instead of letting the line trail, to

tangle the beast, he grabbed it,
was pulled up almost to tlie side.
The gills snapped at him like
mouths. Fie followed the mon-
ster, turn for turn through cold
deeps, as he sought aim. Finally
he shot. An eye went out. A brain
was cloven. A’u turned over and
died.

Flandry gasped after breath.
His helmet rang and buzzed, it
was stifling him, he must snatch
it off before he choked. . . .
Hands caught him. He looked into
the victory which was Derek Um-
bolu’s faee. “Wait there, wait,
Terra man,’’ said a remote godlike
calm. “All is done now.’’

“I, I, I, thanks!” rattled Flandry.

His wind came back to him.
He counted the men that gath-
ered, while they rose with all due
slowness toward the sun. Six were
dead. Cheap enough to get rid of
A’u.

If I had been cast away, alone,
on the entire world of a hideous
race ... I wonder if I would
have had the courage to survive
this long.

I wonder if there are some
small cubs, on a water playiet
deep among the Merseian stars,
who can’t understand why father
hasn't come home.

He climbed on deek at last,
threw back his helmet and sat
down under Tessa Hoorn’s anx-
ious gaze. “Give me a cigaret,” he
said harshly. “And break out
something alcoholie.”

}

129

The Game of Glory

She wrestled herself to steadi-
ness. "Caught you the monster?”
she asked.

“Aye,” said Derek.

“VVe close to didn’t,” said Flan-
dry. “Our boy Umbolu gets the
credit.”

“Small enough vengeance for
my father,” said the flat voice of
sorrow.

The submarine’s captain sa-
luted the pale man who sat bug-
ging his knees, shivering and
drinking smoke. “Word just came
in from Rossala, sir,” he reported.
“The Sheikh has yielded, though
he swears he’ll protest the outrage
to the next Imperial resident. But
he’ll let tlie constables occupy his
realm and search as they tvish.”

Search for a niimher of earnest,
well-intentioned young patriots,
teho'll never again see morning
over broad waters. Well — I sup-
pose it all serves the larger good.
It must. Our noble homosexual
Emperor says so himself.

“Excellent,” said Flandry. His
glance sought Derek. “Since you
saved my life, you’ve got a reward
coming. Your father.”

"Hoy?” The big young man
trod backward a step.

“He isn’t dead,” said Fhmdry,
“I talked him into helping me.
We faked an assassination. He’s
probably at home this minute, suf-
fering from an acute case of con-
science.”

"What?" The roar was like
hell’s gates breaking down.

Flandry winced. “Pianissimo,
please.” He waved the snarling,
fist-clenching bulk back with his
cigaret. “All right, I played a trick
on you.”

"A trick I could have ’waited
from a fdthy Impy!” Tessa Hoorn
spat at his feet.

“Touch me, brother Umbolu,
and I’ll arrest you for treason,” said
Flandry. “Otherwise I’ll exercise
my discretionary powers and put
you on lifetime probation in the
custody of some responsible citi-
zen.” FIc grinned wearily. “I think
the Lightmistress of Little Skua
qualifies.”

Derek and Tessa stared at him,
and at each other.

Flandry stood up. “Probation is
conditional on your getting mar-
ritxl,” he went on. “I recommend
that in choosing a suitable female
you look past that noble self-
righteousness, stop considering
the trivium that she can give you
some money, and consider all that
you might give her.” He glanced
at them, saw that their hands
were suddenly linked together,
and had a brief, private, profane
conversation with the Norn of his
personal destiny. “That includes
heirs,” he finished. “I’d like to have
Nyanza w'ell populated. When the
Long Night comes for Terra, some-
bwly will have to carry on. It
might as well be you.”

He walked past them, into the
cabin, to get away from all the
dark young eyes.

Venturings . . . (^continued from p. 4~)

future would bring to light what was unknown to them. They made
no attempt to predict the unsuspected.

Today we make the same mistake. Recently eight leading scientists
attempted to visualize what the world would be like in the next
hundred years. Their dreams involved the familiar of today extra-
polated into the future . . . hotels in space, control of mind and
body, the selection of sex and heredity of children, mineral mining
in the ocean, ample food production for large populations. This is
the old, the familiar, the unimaginative all over again. It’s the bicycle
built for two. Science fiction has been doing the same thing.

No, if we’re going to speculate about the future, let it be in terms
of the future ... an unfamiliar future in which there’ll be no hotels
because something, unknown and unsuspected today, will have made
tliem obsolete ... a future in which control of mind and body will
be answered by an unexpected development ... a future in which
problems of sex, heredity, mineral mining, food supplies, psionics,
galactic imperialism and The Ultimate Man will be as significant as
the problem of the horseless carriage.

Old maps are most exciting for their great white patches labelled
terra incognita. Isn’t it time for a new, youthful science fiction to
abandon the old familiar stamping grounds and venture into unknown
lands of its own making? — Alfred Bester

Press-time footnote: A letter just in from Doctor Asimov reads as
follows: “In connection with my article ‘The Atmosphere of the
Moon,’ today I came across a note to the effect that observations of
Sputnik showed the density of the atmosphere at a height of 200
kilometers (125 miles) to be 4 x 10’^® grams/cubic centimeter.
According to my calculations, this works out to one-third of a billionth
of an atmosphere. Yet that rarefied an atmosphere is enough to bring
the third-stage rocket of Sputnik I to Earth after two months of flight.
The possible presence of a lunar atmosphere of three times that density
(as mentioned speculatively in my article) would really be significant
in slowing a manned vessel, particularly if the vessel were to put out
fins or some kind of parachute arrangement (to increase the resistance)
when it starts spiralling down to the lunar surface.”

for

the

gourmet

. . . a Lucullan feast of the tastiest,
finest dishes in the field of
fantasy and of science fiction.

The Magazine of FANTASY AND
SCIENCE FICTION each month

goes out looking for the best
new and old stories and articles

in two of literatures most faseinating fields — and comes up with
truffles! This happy fact is attested too by connoisseurs every-
where . . . and by the fact that this magazine has provided the
highest percentage of stories selected by science fiction anthol-
ogists for the last several years.

The February issue, now on sale, offers a rich assortment, includ-
ing such sound and provocative tales as “Pilgrimage,” by Chad
Oliver, “The Last Step,” by Zenna Henderson, and “The Last of
the Deliverers,” by Foul Anderson. The cover, by Ed Emsh, illus-
trates a story inside titled “Baby”— by Carol Emsh wilier. . .whieh
may well be the first time that a husband has done a cover illus-
tration for his wife’s story. But then, firsts are an old story with
FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION Get your copy today,
and find out for yourself.

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